


Not Just Stories

by The_Duchess_of_Fiction



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Curse AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 16:53:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1354741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Duchess_of_Fiction/pseuds/The_Duchess_of_Fiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The curse was a fickle entity. Expecting to find the dread Captain Hook, it spits a child back out on the side of the road. At three, Killian Jones finds himself confronted with the blonde Savior. Emma, abandoned, finds herself staring her past, though neither of them know it.</p>
<p>Or where Killian and Emma grow up together in the Land Without Magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Never Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Starting off as little more than a dream, this story will be a multi chapter, so don't worry if there are a few mysteries still left in the story after the first chapter. Each of those will be based on a novel, this one being, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Nor do I own any of the amazing literature I borrow from.

_One_

_Never Say Goodbye_

"Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting." – Peter Pan

The story was splashed across the front page of the Globe, and surprisingly, page 2 of the Times. Funny, how New York decided that a suicide bombing in the middle east was what the world cared about that day.

But they should have cared about page 2.

_Abandoned at Birth_ , was the catchy title the freshman reporter concocted.

An older child had been found several miles away, wandering in the woods. Though he never made it into the New York Times. He wasn't "news-worthy" enough.

After weeks of reports, asking to claim the babies, they were given over to child services, to people anxiously waiting to 'help' those poor unfortunate children.

The elder of the infants, a disgruntled dark haired three month old, was adopted by a couple in upstate New York, owners of a shipping company on the shores of Lake Erie, as a second son. Their heir and a spare.

The fair newborn girl was snatched up by an anxious husband and wife outside of Boston, teachers who couldn't conceive.

And the six year old, was, surprisingly, adopted by an elderly pair outside of DC, a writer and a government employee, in the hills of Virginia.

The boy and girl had been wrapped in blankets on the side of the road, the girl's elegantly stitched with a name  _Emma_ while the boy's had been a hastily written in cramped scrawl,  _Killian._

They were separated not knowing each other existed.

The oldest of the children, named August grew up, sneaking onto his adopted mother's ancient typewriter and wrote.

And to the middle, Killian, tragedy struck early.

The mother who had held him, the father who had smiled at him, the elder brother who had laughed  _with_ him were gone. Another story splashed all over the news when he was barely three. Drowning, a word Killian Jones was too young to understand.

The relatives, greedy in their own strides for inheritance, had wheedled their way into his place eventually turning him over to social services.

And that's when the dreams started. The more accurate term was nightmares, another word Killian Jones wasn't familiar with. He thought the people always gave him back because of his behavior, not because of the screams in the night he didn't know he was making.

They were strange, some not even frightful. It was a man, who looked a great deal like him, moving through them, sometimes with a silver gutting hook for a hand. Sometimes he wore leather. Others he wore a crisp white uniform, that looked positively antique.

The first time they stopped was when he met  _her._

The teachers, the Swans, were wonderful parents. Wonderful enough for "Mommy" to be blessed with a baby. The grey eyed little girl had watched excitedly as she was told that there was going to be a new baby in the house, ignoring the man and woman's sad eyes.

A stranger-a woman showed up the next day, and took her by the hand, strapping her into the car seat in the back of a car. Emma hadn't seen the suitcase being loaded into the back. All she had done was kiss Mommy and Daddy goodbye as they told her she would be back soon after straightening the white bow on the top her head.

If soon meant never of course.

Emma was the youngest in the home. The halfway house they called it. She was lucky the Nuns had taken her in that one, hearing whispers of worse ones.

After being brought inside by an elderly woman, the girl laid her bag down on a rather shabby bed, carefully pulling out her baby blanket and clutching it to her chest.

"So why'd you have to leave?" A small accented voice echoed from the darker corner of the room. She shrieked and jumped, her crying coming to an abrupt halt as she scanned the room anxiously.

"Who said I had to leave? My parents  _told_ me I'd be home soon." The blonde said defensively, her hardening eyes honing in on a figure cloaked in shadow.

"Grown ups lie." The boy said, jumped down from his hiding place and striding over to her with legs already taller than her. He outstretched on hand to her.

"They didn't give me up." She said, sniffing at the dark haired boy's hand.

"So there's a new baby?" the nameless kid said and anger flared inside the normally sweet blonde.

"How would you know that? You're just a boy?" She snarled, hastily wiping tears away from her eyes as they kept leaking. For a second, a wounded look crossed his face before it just turned to sadness.

"A lot of kids come in looking like you. Call yourself an open book." He said with a cynical smile that looked far too old on his face. Again, this time a bit more tentatively than the first he outstretched his hand, and Emma took it in an oddly adult-like handshake.

Then the little boy did the most shocking thing.

Stepping out to the side and with a wickedly mischievous grin, he bowed to her.

"Does the open book have a name?" He beamed, his brilliant blue eyes shining up at her from his princely position. He didn't look anything like one with hair that looked unfamiliar to a comb and a pair of muddy jeans. She sniffled but managed to smile through the tears, all too amused by the whole situation.

"Emma." She answered softly, giving him a soft giggle and a fumbling curtsy. "Yours?"

"Killian." He replied before snatching her hand and dragging  _her_ down the hall.

The girl and boy were inseparable for the month they spent together, before getting shipped off to respective foster homes. It wasn't purposeful, no, the second day Emma screamed at him for taking her blanket. But, secretly, they knew they were being shoved together by more than fretful old nuns.

During Mass, they always ended up giggling about something. Being the youngest it was sometimes excused, not by the beating of a ruler, but with a "stern" lecture from Father Matthew who secretly slipped them cookies and had taken a sort of special shine to Killian.

Killian liked to brag it's because they shared the same accent, the curious Irish one the boy couldn't seem to shake. Emma suspected it was because he was here the most.

Even though Killian was her only friend, she had heard the others talk. Of how he was always sent back before the month was even up.

However, on little Emma Swan knew why.

The nuns must not have been thinking clearly when they put the two in the same room together. Some kids had complained about how Killian didn't have to share, though he did have the smallest quarters.

Killian was plagued by something. The devil or demons was what the Bible told her. Yet, the girl's heart whispered that it was something more than that, something neither of them understood, almost compelling her to slip into the opposing bed with the child trapped in his own mind.

The screams stopped after that. And every morning Sister Agnes would rouse them with a laugh and a kindly smile, comparing them to puppies.

Killian would pout and Emma would grin, both of them thinking it would never end.

Yet, when the time ran out (the limit was a month) they were sent off to places not as kind as those original homes they had been given to a babies.

Emma was taken to an apartment in SoHo, to an artist couple growing weed in the flower boxes.

They were rather nice, introducing her (and their drugged out selves) to the world of Disney and replacing the pristine white hair bow with a slightly paint splattered ribbon, in a myriad of color.

Killian was sent to another nameless home with the absentee parents who only came home to sleep and left him during the day hours, giving him back in the first week. He suspected they had wanted to drag him back that first night, but the money wasn't horrible from the New York Child Welfare. It was sad that an almost-four year old knew that.

Emma was forced to return after 6 months. She hadn't wanted to. Hanna and Chris (they had told her to call them by their first names) were good people, a bit too lax as parents, to be honest, but Emma craved the attention that was given. Those were the last bedtime stories she heard.

Again, they stayed in the orphanage for the whole month, social workers uneasy to send the labeled "problem" of Killian into the world. The fathers had just convinced them that Emma should remain too.

Her fourth birthday passed without notice of most of the convent, excluding Father Matthew, who invited her to a very grown-up feeling tea and Killian, who managed to convince Mother Superior to play Peter Pan that night.

For some strange reason, Killian both hated and loved the Disney flick, but mostly he watched it because Emma. One of the few things she had been allowed to take from one of her foster homes had been an old downtrodden copy of J.M. Barrie's classic. Instead of showing it to the older kids, though, for fear of it being stolen, Killian and her struggled to read parts, though they both knew the story too well.

Of a place where there were no grown-ups. A place of happy endings.

Killian had an uneasy feeling about it. The little blonde had been subjected to more than one of his rants on the cowardly Captain Hook, defending the man for reasons the boy couldn't explain.

Always they were brought back to the much read lines from the end of the novel. "Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting." In the dead of night, under a half moon as they stood looking up at the stars, the girl in a thin white night gown, her green eyes concentrating much too hard on the stars and long blonde hair silver in the moonlight, and the boy in a pair of blue button down pajamas, his azure eyes instead fixated on the girl, made a promise.

Never to say goodbye. Never to forget each other.

Never was a very long time, as Pan once said, a fact that the children were unfamiliar with then, but certainly not now. They hadn't left the other's side, willingly, since that promise at 3.

That's why when they were sent away again, this time Emma got the crappy home and Killian got a decent one, they did say goodbye. The little girl took his hand and whispered in his ear "wait for me." And then with a comical bow, he replied, "as you wish" her face turned scarlet as she was put into a taxi.

Emma's new mother was unhinged to say the least. A smoker (and alcoholic) living off of state welfare, the woman wasn't psychologically sound. She would one moment be shouting at shadows that weren't there, and another be screaming at the very real child hiding in the corner. The neighborhood wasn't too much better. Alphabet City was terrifying to 'normal' people.

It took seven months of her cowering before the woman moronically tried to use the microwave and started a fire.

She was grateful to get away with the case that she had been dragging around for almost two years now. Grateful for the nice policeman wrapping the blanket around her and wipe the smudge of dirt from her cheek. Grateful when Father Matthew drove up in the shiny church Chevy and took her suitcase and picked her up, taking her away from the still slightly smoking building, reminding her of her ex-mother's cigarette burns, carefully hidden under her sleeves.

Emma was the opposite arriving at the convent. Her static companion, the Convent's boy, wasn't there.

That night, in  _their_ room, she cried herself to sleep, hollow eyes watching the bed across the brief expanse of floor, an ocean of hardwood between.

It felt so odd to Killian, the new home. They didn't kick him out at the end of the week. They  _were_ there the whole time. They didn't yell. They didn't add to his collection of bruises.

It was a small farm closer to Pennsylvania than his old home by the Great Lakes. Quite lonesome in a way, like the ancient couple who had taken him in, with a towering forest. Unlike New York, the silent was deafening.

The farmer and his wife, James and Sarah, had kids. A publisher in the city and a housewife in Philly. The visited not often at all, individuals who constantly complained to their elderly parents about 'the old place.' Thanksgiving and Christmas they gave him those looks, like what is this  _urchin_ doing here.

Killian didn't mind though. They didn't mind his nightmares, occasionally coming into his room and giving him a hug and a warm glass of milk from the cows outside to settle him down. And as all thing did in his life, they broke apart in the end.

A heart attack was like a snakebite, quick and deadly was the euphemism that the paramedic muttered as he closed up the body bag over the old man's peacefully wrinkled face, giving the sobbing Sarah a pitying look. Killian walked over to her, determined, and put his arms around her waist, sniffling as he watched another parent be taken away for burial.

This time, he didn't hear the conversations about sending him away. And this time it wasn't because of his screams. "Mom, you can't take this kid to my house." Was what the son hissed. And the daughter, with eyes, which her smile never reached, "Mom, I don't want him around my kids."

She did apologize. Gave him a hug and drove off crying as he stood, once again in front of the welcoming wooden door of the convent, a suitcase in one hand and another raised, about to knock. And then he looked to the side and noticed the calendar, marked with the church events.

Circled was the next day, July 20th, with a small pirate ship sticker and careful, but still obviously child-like handwriting in the corner.

_Killian's Birthday._

A grin pushed its way past the mournful expression he wore.

This time, she had been waiting for him.


	2. Swept off To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never thought a crazed dream of mine would be something people would be actually interested in reading. I want to thank my two lovely friends/betas Montana-rosalie (check out her stories they're heavenly) and naiariddle (prompt genius). The inspiration and quote for this chapter is from J.R.R Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring. And yes this means I plan on using other Tolkien works (Lord of the Rings, Hobbit). Also, see if you can spot which Oscar nominated movie makes a guest appearance in this chapter's foster parents.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at ladyswaninsists.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Nor do I own any of the amazing literature I borrow from.

_Two_

_Swept off To_

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."– Bilbo Baggins

The first time the world of crime touched Emma Swan, was not of her own doing. The first time she dipped her toes into it, she didn't even know what she was getting into.

They were eight. That fragilely innocent number that always was associated with First Communions and second grade. And Emma was the more naïve one to the ways of the world while Killian deep in sin, with less of a string of permanent homes, and more of a history of not exactly having "good ones."

The couple that had taken them in, ever so "graciously" didn't care.

The woman was young, way too young, with a British accent that the boy had stated after her first sentence was fake. He was right of course, as the woman slapped him hard across the face and snarled for him to never say that in public, in an accent that obviously American. Ever so roughly Jersey, with none of the previous sparkles of class she had put on before, despite the expensive clothing and jewels she wore.

The man had a harsh Bronx accent, and wasn't what anyone would call an athlete. He tried to make up for it with a ridiculously elaborate comb over that, did nothing to hide his encroaching baldness. The scent of Havana cigars, Kentucky Bourbon, and New York sex clung to the 'fat man' suit he wore when picking them up.

Their car was like them, expensive but built on dollars that weren't theirs to spend.

The reason they were fostered out, finally chosen from the other children in the convent was unclear for the first month they spent with the odd couple. The apartment they had doubled as an office, two floors in an older building in the Upper East Side. Killian and Emma, shared a bedroom, in the corner of the second floor, the farthest from the master.

Two beds, it was still larger than anywhere the pair had stayed before.

Really they didn't care. They had been allowed to stay together.

The purpose of why they were taken by the wealthy couple wasn't exactly clear of course. The man was gone most of the nights, and during the days he didn't speak to them, and the woman, while kind at times, would turn volatile. Not towards them, yes she would yell, yet she had a sort of depressing kindness about her that led to tentative hugs from the ever too trusting Emma.

The only rule they really had was that they needed to be playing whenever a customer came in. In the living room. Which any clients had to pass through to go to the shiny wood paneled office decorated with painting of swirling brushstrokes that matched some hanging at the Met.

Neither of them listened to what they were saying, at least for the first week. They could be reading together, playing a game, or even running around the expanse of white carpet. The only condition, that the woman,  _Amy,_ had hissed in Emma's ear as she straightened the purple ribbon holding her ponytail in place, was that she speak like Killian.

It  _was_ rather fun. People who came in would remark how 'adorable' she was, as 'Mum' slipped her thin, ringed fingers into the person's purse. It was fascinating, watching the elaborate dance of sin unfold before her, slowly circling her, like the long drags from the 20's esque cigarette holder Amy put to her lips between words.

It was corruption with jewels, debauchery with domination, a game that was so much more than just a pair of sneaky fingers.

Emma quickly caught on. The façade of a family, as whichever client complimented Amy on her children or when Jay took his cigar out of his mouth and huskily said "look I'm a family man," before giving the poor sob a devilish smile.

They were a device. It wasn't like they were abused. Punished sure, but with grounding and such, not beatings like both of them were used to. And they weren't treated like they  _always_ did something wrong. Occasionally, Killian got yelled at for tracking mud into the house, while Emma was obviously the favorite.

Amy would take her shopping, on Fifth Avenue to little boutiques that always commented on her "little accent" and showered her in ribbons and bows and little dresses that made her feel quite young, while in reality she had probably been through more than all the pampered salesladies combined.

And the man was never there. He had hit Killian once, when they were nine. After that, he ignored them both and Killian flinched whenever he walked by.

Their ninth year was good.

Killian had grown lanky, with awkward limbs and tousled raven hair that never stayed in place and that same pair of blue eyes that hauntingly bore into your soul. He was, surprisingly, for all his troublesome antics and snarky comments, a good student, somehow two years ahead in math, no one could explain why the boy just spent the entire class drawing maps though.

Emma had stayed short, petite the true word in the sizes of her clothes. That year, after not being able to recognize the image on the stained glass window in the parish, Father Matthew and Killian had dragged her crosstown, and perched a pair of glasses on her nose. Emma didn't try in class, instead reading the Fellowship of the Ring under her desk in a record weeks' time, a birthday present that Killian had bought for a buck fifty on the corner of Broadway and 40th.

Every day, they walked to school together, Killian insisting on carrying her backpack stuffed with books, saying that he was being a gentleman, but in reality, they both knew that the much shorter girl had a propensity to trip on flat surfaces.

For the first time, they were allowed to be in the same class, the two orphans "enormously introverted" according to their teacher as they never spoke to the other kids at all. Three times a week they took the bus cross town to visit the parish, and attend mass (though their 'parents' were Jewish).

They had grown up in suburbia, but now they were city kids. Hardened and cynical, they fit right into the corrupted circle of adults they were passed around from. They never knew when the Russian Roulette of the foster care system would land them with a druggie, an alcoholic, a thief, or a liar, but somehow they always managed to survive.

Yet, in the afternoons, under a sun that wasn't really theirs they weren't themselves.  
Under the greenery, Emma was lost down a hole, in a quest gone wrong. By the lake, Killian was the captain of a grand voyage, set to find the lost princess.

The stories, they never had any idea, were more than that.

As Emma played a princess locked in a tower, Killian climbed the tree to valiantly rescue her, not knowing that, once upon a time, this could have been them.

It wasn't so far-fetched those now faded dreams of Middle Earth, as much as Emma raised a branch like a sword, stabbing a bush, her Witch King, and as much as Killian commanded a force of invisible troops, a much easier feat than slaying, but no less honorable.

As the girl hid in shadows, the boy walked in the light of honor.

Central Park didn't change as they grew up, as children always did, without a visit from a shadow nor a knock on the door. Yet they were still forced to find themselves in the "dangerous business of going out your door."

It wasn't forceful, stepping out onto the road.

It had been an ordinary night, in middle of the scorching summer when New York felt like an iron pan. Amy and Jay had been whispering off and on all day, not seeing any clients at all. To be honest, the entire month they had been acting strangely, getting mysterious phone calls that expelled Killian and Emma from the house.

And in the middle of that regular midsummer night, their 'mother' roused them from their beds and told them to pack. Told them they were going on a trip.

Neither of them believed it, at a few days past eleven and a couple months shy of it, yet regardless they packed, each of them with two quite large cases of their clothes, possessions, and most importantly, the collection of books they had managed to accumulate in two and half years.

Back on the road again, the little girl, not quite so little anymore, and the mysterious boy, not quite so mysterious now, shared a look.

Of course, they didn't say goodbye, as was tradition, as Amy stiffly hugged Killian farewell and then enveloped Emma with a hint of an apology on her scarlet lips as she drew back and left them on the sidewalk outside of the once again foreboding looking convent.

"Come on Swan." Killian said huskily, grabbing his blonde companion's wrist in one hand and tugging on her suitcases with the other, leaving his own on the city sidewalk. Mounting the steps, she slipped, nearly falling down onto the cold dark gray pavement before his hand tightened in hers and his other arm came to cradle her body.

The familiarly comforting blue met the once again broken green and the boy gave her the cynical smile, that taunting one that almost screamed, "I told you. Grown ups lie. They don't care about us at all."

Yet instead, being older now, he gave her not a hug with his arms, though she rested in them anyways, but the warm comforting blanket of a hole in the ground.

"Watch yourself, love, if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." Her eyes widened at first in surprise and then recognition, as the words of a very old hobbit to a younger one floated off of the page and fell through the dark haired boy's lips.

"Don't you dare try and sweep me off my feet, Jones." She said, for the first time in forever her bristly walls going back up in defense of her static heart.

And so the boy tugged the suitcases back up the stairs and pounded on the door, handing off Emma to the sad eyed nun, who was all too familiar with the lonely night watch.

Carrying the rest of their worldly possessions down the hall, to the beds that made it seem like they had never left.

The next day, their parents made the fourth page of the Times. Classy Criminals was the headline, another attempt at "cutesy" that failed.

This time neither of them read it.

Learning not to care was a hard thing to do, for children barely a decade old. For anyone for that matter.

Yet, with all the time they had spent trying to stand steady against the force of life itself, they were worn down to old bitter souls that could really never really see the light of the world without each other.

The glade in Central Park grew huge gnarled roots that winter, similar to the pattern of barely scabbed over scars crisscrossing Killian's back that stabbed at his movements like a dagger in his back.

The green of the grass wasn't as bright nor as full, when it broke away above frosty ground, eerily like the fading of Emma's form, slightly weedier than earlier with a bony quality to her cheekbones that hadn't been there before, her eyes, enlarged by the almost chronically broken glasses, the sole patch of color of her whole person.

And they pretended not to notice their downward spiral, clinging to the false memories of hope that stories gave them.

Around that time, was when the line between being "kicked out" and "running away" began to be crossed more and more often.

Orphans always got a criminal record. The state blamed them for the bad condition they were put in, but honestly, stealing just food to get buy didn't get pity.

It was the 90's after all.

The bond between the two grew, more so under the awkward pretenses of tending cuts, than trying not to meet each other's eyes.

Emma found that she knew when the boy told her that he had already ate, as he handed her a sandwich in the schoolyard, he was lying.

Of course, Killian had known since she was three when she said she wasn't hungry, it wasn't the truth.

The one lie that Killian would always tell, changing by the day, yet she begged him for the truth, begged him about the demons that sank their teeth into his mind and plagued his dreams.

He couldn't explain, shame being the only reason that sometimes he swore he didn't have a left hand, and others he would wake up to the crashing of waves against wood, and the sway of a ship.

And the one truth neither of them could get out of themselves was why Killian dreamt.

It wasn't real.

It was a just a product of his imagination, a mixture of the tales he had grown up on as his only companions (besides Emma of course.)

Yet, he still lied to himself when he thought about why his parents had abandoned him, as every orphan did. Because he knew deep down he hadn't been abandoned, he knew that there was something else that he just didn't know, another piece of the grand story of Emma and Killian that always seemed to be headed downward.

Several times he had held Emma as she cried for a family. Always after, he would be filled with remorse, as though he had done something wrong. Then he would gently push her tangled long blonde hair away from her ear, as pressed his lips even with it.

"I can be all the family you need, Emma."

She smiled faintly under the light of a single star, as he held her hand, not knowing the dangerous road the pair of them was stepping onto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to suggest any novels you want me to base chapters on! Coming up next a Captain Swan Classic: The Princess Bride!


	3. As You Wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the Princess Bride...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From last chapter I had a couple people ask me who "Amy and Jay" were. They were my tribute to "American Hustle," a kickass movie, I hope all you go see.
> 
> I want to thank my two lovely friends/betas Montana-rosalie (READ HER NEW AU IT'S ADDICTIVE) and naiariddle (prompt guru and one of the sweetest CSer I know).
> 
> The rating finally will change in this chapter for sexual content and implied under aged non-consent. And yes, I did do my research on the latter.
> 
> Also, choosing between Princess Bride quotes has to be one of the hardest decisions of my life, I chose two. Enjoy!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at ladyswaninsists.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Nor do I own any of the amazing literature I borrow from.

_Three_

_As You Wish_

"I've been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn't listen. Every time you said 'Farm Boy do this' you thought I was answering 'As you wish' but that's only because you were hearing wrong. 'I love you' was what it was, but you never heard." – Westly

"Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high." -Westly

Whenever a kid in the foster system becomes a teenager, you lose hope. The last shreds of it, anyways, that only the few would cling onto past age 8, when you were no longer "young" or "cute."

Emma had given it up after foster home number three, and Killian—well by the time he was at three homes he was three years old.

Killian's coming of age was rather sudden, as a thirteen year old who no longer fit in the bed he had slept in since he was two, long legs spilling off the end of it, habitually knocking his fair blonde companion off of it, though they had shared even since they could remember. Thankfully of course, as the rather rude awakening of  _there's a girl in my bed what is my body doing_  that flitted through Killian's mind as he uncomfortably shielded the bulge in his pants away from the complaining girl, who had been rudely dumped on the floor.

It took him another four days for Emma to figure out that apparently their childlike patterns were stimulating a rather adult-like reaction in her best friend.

An impish smirk on her face, she tested the water, quite innocently rubbing up against him in bed just to watch his pallid face turn red.

Hers stealthily crept up on her, as the female menstrual cycle often did, with an unannounced present with a giant "fuck you" label at age thirteen. She, of course, hadn't told Killian instead running to the nearest nun in the hallway and blubbering about blood. Apparently the New York Public Education system didn't do a good job of sex ed. For years, she had noticed those airbags on her chest slowly inflated, but had thought nothing of it, until that fateful day of  _the period_ and Sister Lily dragged her down to Kohl's and bought her several "bras."

They were actually quite pretty, in nice pastel colors that matched lacy barely there underwear that the nun had scoffed as scandalous.

It wasn't until Killian saw did she realize that they were no longer who kids who could sleep in the same bed. They could still be best friends of course, but one of the books she had gotten from the New York Public Library had been very detailed in its explanation of males and their… swords.

He was fourteen when Killian Jones realized that he was in love with his best friend.

Emma Swan was someone he had never thought of loving—at least not in that way. She was tough as nails, with an attitude to match, and a garden behind her walls that he only could see.

But, the garden.

It had happened in a perfectly ordinary set of events, as falling in love often did.

She had been sitting on a patch of grass, a book held in one hand, her glasses falling down her nose, and a blonde curl in her mouth, while the rest of her unruly locks fell in a messy sort of tangle over the cream thread bare blanket.

In that moment, when her mesmerizing emerald eyes, the exact same color as the grass, as the secret garden of her heart whose walls he realized her so ever wanted to climb, she asked him to do his homework.

She had ordered him to do things before and always would her respond with the slightly teasing line of "as you wish," but never had Killian's "as you wish" been as serious before.

Not that she noticed of course.

The fair lady just rolled her eyes, pushing her glasses up her nose and going back to her book.

He had always said it, since the time they watched the movie when they were five. As joke, though all those years he hadn't know he had been saying "I love you." Now, however, each time he said it, she would laugh and roll her eyes as before, yet, to Killian, it was a dagger in his heart.

There was no logic to being fifteen. To boners, to boobs, or to beatings, the last one wasn't stereotypically fifteen.

Emma liked that foster home that year, probably why she stayed, even though it was a woman old enough to be her sister who, by day was a PA and nights, was a stripper.

It was actually sort of fun, the dangerousness of it all. The sensual lace, the cash, she watched it all never actually diving into this new kind of sin that captivated the corruptible blonde's eyes.

And to be honest, that sweltering summer's day when she had had enough of the heat and took of her shirt, it was well worth it to see Killian's face burn red.

The exact same colors as the risqué bra.

Social services was a pain in the ass, Emma decided, a fact that Killian had always known as they dragged her back to the orphanage, away from those "negative" influences.

A fact of life was there were perverts out there. Ones, even with gold branding bands on their left hands, salivated over a sixteen year old girl.

Or boy for that matter.

Killian started to run away almost every day, policemen finding the kid sleeping wherever he could find a park bench, or clearing in Central Park where the trees allowed him to see the sky. He left his stuff at the orphanage, carrying around a backpack during the day, knowing that he was practically homeless now.

At least Emma never found out.

Father Matthew, finally made a deal with him, after 6 months of being brought back to the parish by the same night patrol cop from the park, who always wore a pitying expression at the boy. Killian had to work, real labor, every day, to earn his keep.

Many of the children lamented Killian's good fortune, to have a home was a rare thing indeed, yet all he did was forlornly long for the slightly depressed Emma.

She hated him. He had left her. With a real home and job, god she envied him. Better than the starving hovel she spent her days in, with the woman that was never there, a couple of kids who had spent the latter part of their teenage years incarcerated, and a man who forced her to her knees at least once a week.

Killian hadn't been able to talk for thirty minutes on her seventeenth birthday, when she turned down his present of another book and asked him to take her virginity instead.

Talking wasn't necessary of course, as after five she just grabbed the lapels of his blue plaid shirt and pressed his lips to hers.

He hadn't expected her to so plaintively ask for  _that._ The thing he had wanted nothing more for two years and longer, a gift he had wanted to give along with his ripped out heart, was something convenient her.

Not convenient, more a necessity, though he returned her kiss as though he was a dying man, wrapping his broad arms around her small shoulders, feeling his usually annoying attachment rising to the occasion with relative haste.

The most pleasurable thing about her kiss was her hands, the clever little things Killian had watched snatch a variety of objects over the years, moving through his hair, down his cheeks, under his shirt, lightly pushing on his chest to almost force him down onto the tiny bed they had shared since they were toddlers.

Her long blonde hair cascaded onto him, in that mixture of wavy and straight that she hated and he loved, his head falling to the pillow as the kiss turned heavy, as her body did on top of his.

Killian, though pleased with the sudden  _turn_ of events, was in no mood to be on bottom of the slight girl, however intoxicatingly hypnotic her lips alone could be. Flipping them in one motion, without detaching his lips from hers, then she let out a gasp of surprise as her back hit the white draped mattress, a golden halo spreading out around her head.

She threw a leg over his, pressing closer, her hands roaming restlessly as if she couldn't quite decide where to settle, yet she wanted to taut him all the same. He was quite sure of his destination, though, his own hands dived underneath her shirt, seeking the soft warmth of her skin, and she made a tiny moan at that which sent the blood rushing straight from his brain, and the little push of her hips against his didn't much help that either.

For years now, he had slept next to her, yet never had touched the precious lumps that had oh so mysteriously appeared, as much as he had then lusted after them. The only confiding them…

She was wearing the bra , the one she had ever so teasingly let him see in all its red laced glory once upon a time. He worked the buttons of her top with grace, the starched white fabric gaping open to reveal a present for Killian himself.

His hand shook as he reverently ran one long finger over the lacey cup, as her clever ones in turn vibrated against his as she snapped the buttons off without the same care Killian had shown her.

Fiddling with the damn bra clasp, he gently lifted her up, as to take off both the shirt and the garment in one stroke. Her bare breasts just barely coasted on his chest, sending out a single jolt of electricity between them.

If either of them were to be honest, they could have stopped there, with the wanton touches, the light kisses, the simplicity of keeping it in both of their pants. If the circumstances had been different, that's probably all that would have happened. Instead, her once child-like innocent pair of grassy green eyes turned a deep shade of emerald desire, Killian—and Emma knew that wasn't in the cards.

She gripped his shoulders, pulling his entire body flush with hers, her lips ghosting over his ear with a whisper tugging at them.

"C'mon."

His hands drifted lower, away from the set of perfect breasts he could have spent a year worshipping alone, over the flat plane of white skin, and finally "resting" on the prominent curvature of her hips, his thumbs lightly skimming over the waistband of her blue skirt.

Emma found her breath becoming more and more labored as he moved downward, looking like he had once when he was much younger and had received a new toy. And then he stopped.

Letting out an angered hiss, he flicked his large, eager, puppy like, sapphire eyes to meet hers, the nerves evident from the look alone.

Giving him a slight nod, he didn't break their gaze, just letting his heavy hands stay on her hips, the butterflies in her tummy now moving in a frantic dance. She gave him a petulant look and he gave a rather breathless laugh, as though she had caught him don't something he ought not to be doing (stalling.)

"As you wish." He said, with a twinkle in his eyes as he dragged the article of clothing, along with the scrap of lace panties, down further, leaving her completely bare in front of him.

He lowered his mouth again, this time to take one pert nipple in it, as his fingers ran lower, cradling her sex in the same worshipful manner that he had always had, before removing them, eliciting an insistent moan from Emma, who grabbed him again, this time at the hips, as he unzipped his jeans and the sword sprung free.

Just as he had done for her, Emma violently tugged down the pants, the denim rough against her skin and she was, for a brief moment, thankful that her best friend went commando.

Their breath hitched at the same time as he stretched out over her, pushing into her as slowly as he could stand even as he wanted to just grab her hips and thrust in deep as he could. Teenage hormones aside he had made himself a promise after watching his first porno that he would  _make love_ to Emma, not just get the need out.

Gasping, she clutched at his shoulders, fingernails digging in a bit.

"OK?" he asked, surprised his tongue still worked because the sheer feel of her was too much, he'd had no idea that being inside her would be like this.

"Yeah, just…hang on." She panted, squirming a bit against him "Let me get used to it." Killian bit back a gasp as he just about lost it from that.

"Hold still," he pleaded, his shaking hands roaming to find her hips once again, "or I swear this is gonna be over in about ten seconds."

She looked up at him, her face just inches from his, so that he could count each tan freckle on her nose, each blonde eyelash, each crack in her cherry lips, and then she gave him that grin. The one that she would give adults and kids alike before she did something she shouldn't.

"So what, between the two of us we just lay here like this the whole night and stare at each other and hope it works eventually?"

Killian turned red, even though he knew that he couldn't stay hard for much more (come on at seventeen you could only contain the novelty of being in a girl for so long)

As if to tease him even more, she hooked her legs around his waist, pulling him in even deeper, so that there wasn't a single bit of her skin that wasn't touching him.

It only took a few (three) thrusts before he completely lost it, riding the orgasmic high with slight disappointment as she caught hers only second after him.

When he had come back down, she was still riding hers, mewls coming out of her mouth that almost make in hard inside of her all over again. Yet when those catlike green eyes opened, he was almost scared to pull out.

He was looking at her again. Not just looking at her, Killian always did that. He was looking at her with the reverence she didn't deserve, with the hope that she could not give.

With that puppy like expression that reminded her of 7 years him, begging for approval.

She could give him that, a smile and a nod, nudging him off of her and planting one sweet kiss on his lips before leaving the bed for the bathroom.

Emma never saw him touch his lips, or stare at the bra and panties with the awestruck look. Yet, she did smirk into the mirror, seeing something else than the miserable orphan in the reflecting glass.

She felt lucky too, before her world collapsed, she and Killian had gotten one good thing.

The next Saturday, in the poor excuse of a foster home, with those poor excuses of parents, she lay in her bed as she heard the creaks of the floor outside.

The man came into her room, smelling like foster father #3 had, like alcohol except this one reeked of the cheap kind, not the expensive Bourbon Jay had drank.

Leering at her with none of the pretenses of doing anything else, the man tore of the blankets, sending Emma scampering to the headboard in fear, squeezing her eyes shut, and muttering a Latin prayer.

The approach never came, the blow never hit, the entry never applied. Peeking open one eye, she didn't find her would-be rapist.

Killian stood there, holding the man's neck as he slumped to the floor, alive, but unconscious, with a myriad of purple and black bruises forming on his neck. His face was set like a stone, as somber as the black he wore as gently took her hand, grabbed her suitcase and ran.

So that's what they did. Ran away from the foster system. Ran away from themselves.

Yet, they could only run for so long…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to suggest any novels you want me to base chapters on! Next time: Les Miserables!


	4. I'm Sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Victor Hugo's Les Miserables...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank my two lovely friends/betas Montana-rosalie (IF YOU WANT ANGST READ HER AU THERE YOU'LL BE RATED P FOR PAIIINNNN) and naiariddle (an amazingly humble and sweet person follooowwww).
> 
> For this chapter, yes it is Tallahassee. Don't hate me. And for choosing Les Mis for this chapter… well. I'm not sorry.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at ladyswaninsists.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Nor do I own any of the amazing literature I borrow from.

_Four_

I'm Sorry

" _Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves."_

Emma wasn't alone.

At least that's what she told the cop at the train station in St. Louis, she was travelling to see her grandmother in Texas.

Killian wasn't a thief.

At least that's what he told the man in Denver, he was a good Catholic boy who would never be slipping the leather wallet in his back pocket.

They weren't siblings.

At least that's what they didn't tell the waitress in Portland, they were 'lovers' right out of high school in Jersey travelling coast to cast.

People were ignorant. Cops were suspicious, yet who wouldn't believe the innocent blink of Emma's startling green eyes and flip of her blonde ponytail.

Portland wasn't New York. Cities all had their own vibe, while this one didn't feel like a city after the pair had spent their childhood in the largest city on this side of the world.

It was small enough for people to be ignorant, but large enough to hide in a sea of bodies.

They did work, honestly. Father Matthew, who had found them within the first week, after the man Killian had 'nearly killed' filed a report. It was eventually dropped, yet not before they were across the country and the head of the Portland Parish sought them out, helping them both find jobs.

Yet, it wasn't enough.

Emma hustled bars, brightly grinning with red lips at half-drunken men while she slipped wallets out of pockets, snatched watches off of hands.

Killian just stole, with the finesse Emma had, yet immediately going to confession after.

After two months, they knew they couldn't stay. Bonnie and Clyding one city was dangerous.

And neither of them were strangers to sin, yet jail was a whole other matter.

And that's what compelled the kids to take one look at the yellow Volkswagen Bug parked in a forgotten alleyway, off of a backstreet.

It was a faded sort of yellow, with dust on the windshield and days old mud in the tires, from the last time it had rained in the city.

Abandoned like the two of them, it drew the two kids out of the diner, Emma tucking the guy at the counter's wallet into the leather satchel she carried while Killian checked behind them.

She stood on the end leaning against the dingy brick wall as Killian drew out a long silver tool, that bore resemblance to a screwdriver without its handle.

The door opened with a click, and after a few short seconds of popping off and slicing wires, the engine 'roared' to life.

With a faint sparkle of his blue eyes, he called Emma over, who grinned and jogged his way as he slid into the driver's seat and she moved into the passenger, sitting her bag right on top of the gear shift.

"Em…" Killian groaned, and she shot him a dirty look which he replied to in kind with a shit eating smirk, looking all too pleased at his latest robbery.

Without throwing the car into drive, Killian stepped on the gas, jerking the car forward. His head hit the steering wheel, Emma's forehead planted into the dash and..

A body hit both their seats, the dead weight eliciting as both of the teenagers let out a shriek, Emma's only a bit higher than Killian's own.

A man popped up behind the seat, leaning on the two of them with a smirk. "Really, you could've just asked me for the keys."

The pair looked at him, Killian's blue squinted in suspicious while Emma's green were wide with fear.

"Just drive. It's fine." He said, yet Killian made no move for the gear shift.

"We just stole your car. Your life could be in danger." Killian challenged, his eyes narrowing even further examining the young man's long hair, tanned skin, and good natured brown eyes with one glance.

"Neal Cassidy." He piped up under the laser like glare. Under Emma's stare, she realized 'Neal' was handsome. Sort of in the same way Killian was, in that roguish sort of manner hidden in an easy grin and wrapped in raggedy clothes.

"No way in hell am I telling you my name, mate." Killian snapped back turning his full attention to the strange man.

"No, I don't need it to have you arrested when the robbery's in progress." His eyes alighted on Emma. "What's yours?"

Blushing she replied under Killian's glare. "Emma. Swan."

He smirked at her flirtatiously, turning Killian glare even harder. "Good name." then he looked at Killian again. "You going to tell me yours?"

"Killian Jones." He snapped without any emotion except his typical protective rage.

"So do you just live in here, or are you just waiting for the car to be stolen?" Emma said, sassing the man with one blink of her black eyelashes behind the enhancing glasses as her raven haired companion threw open the door and stepped out the bug as the other man did the same.

They stood at odds with each other, Neal relaxed against the car as Killian leaned forward with his fists clenched.

"Why don't I tell you over drinks?" The older boy asked with the cocky confidence that irked Killian to no end.

"Excuse me?" Emma blurts out at the same time as Killian roared "NO!" Yet the other man never looked at the blonde's knight, instead almost leering at the girl.

"I am not having drinks with you. You might be a pervert." She stammered, the memories of those childhood incidents coming back to her all to prominently.

"I might be a pervert, but you're definitely a car thief." He smirked

"It wasn't me. What are you, some sort of misogynist?" She defended pointed at Killian, who didn't look the slightly bit guilty.

"Sorry." Killian 'apologized' with no regret. Neal looked around this eyes catching each detail in the same manner that the pair always looked.

"Come on, we can talk later over drinks." He said, pushing Killian away from the driver's side and getting in. The teenagers shared a confused look.

"What's the fucking hurry?" Killian swore, throwing open the car door.

"Congratulations 'mate.'" Neal sarcastically smirked at him, then Emma. "You just stole a stolen car."

The bar was a hole in the wall really. Neal ordered a beer, while Killian had nothing. In the years of foster care, and watching 12 step programs at the parish, he had come to despise alcohol.

"So where are y'all from?" He asked once the sluttily dressed waitress brought the bottle.

"New York." Killian said shortly. "You?"

"A lot of places." He laughed. "Parents?"

"None." Emma said, her eyes going agate hard. And then the man—Neal had the audacity to laugh.

Killian stood up from the table, clutching at Emma's arm, his other fist ready to swing, Neal's eyes widened visibly and he shrunk back into his bottle.

"Hey…" He said. "I didn't mean to offend you guys or anything, it's just…"

"Just what?" Killian snarled.

"Funny." He finished lamely, Killian and Emma's already harsh glares intensifying. "I mean, I'm one too. Yet, to be honest you guys don't act like normal orphans." Emma raised an eyebrow.

"How so?" She asked, getting up and popping her hips against the table.

"For one, you're this close to getting caught and sent to a lock up." He said holding up his index and pointer finger not even an inch apart. "I can help."

"How old are you even? How do we know you're not some psyco rapist?" Emma defended, as Neal slammed down a twenty and headed out of the bar. And almost on an instinct, they followed him.

"I'm 20. And you are…. 17? 18?" He said, leaning against the yellow bug, opening the passenger door with a sideway smirks. "So are you in or not?"

Killian and Emma shared a look. And then she grabbed his arm and pulled him down towards her, her lips skating over his ear. "Just for a bit. To get out of Portland." She said, before climbing into the car.

They got out of Portland. Driving south, raiding convenience stores, with an occasional wallet stealing, to pay for a motel room.

Neal was a drinker, something that disgusted both Emma and Killian, during those lonely nights in dark strange rooms, on an unfamiliar coast.

What had happened in that unfamiliar apartment, only six months ago, was hard to avoid. Emma wouldn't dare sleep in the same bed as a drunk, and she wouldn't let Killian sleep on the floor.

Killian never was proud of what they did. If they stopped in a city, like the dutifully Catholic pew boy he was, he would find a parish and attend Mass. Emma would come occasionally, yet neither of them would go to confessional. Still.

The only time he really smiled after a haul, was when he handed her a silver keychain, with an elegantly shaped swan at the end. Shyly, she had smiled as she slipped in her pocket, sitting next to him on a cheap, worn motel bed, before just as hesitantly leaned towards him, capturing his lips in hers before the door banged open.

"20 minutes till housekeeping. You wanna shower first?" Neal asked, as Emma and Killian shot away from each other, her eyes searching the room for something, anything to distract from the decidedly immature action.

"Oh, look." She said, with a false sense of wonder towards the object on the table inbetween the two beds and picking it up. "The Granola family left this."

"What is that?" Neal asked, and Killian's mouth stretched in a slightly malicious grin.

"It's a native American dream-catcher. It's supposed to keep all the nightmares out and only let the good dreams in to protect your home." He said in his most commanding know-it-all voice he could muster. Emma rolled her eyes.

"It's flypaper for nightmares. One of my foster homes had one." Emma said with a sad grin on her face.

And again they did that thing. The annoying mind meld where they thought they were the only two people in the room, speaking in half sentences.

Neal stomped to the bathroom and slammed the door, still listening to the two teenagers' strange jabber.

"They didn't have…" Killian began only followed with a light laugh from his lady.

"Who do you think?" Emma said in mid laugh.

"Ah. Why didn't you?"

"Tell? Didn't want to…"

"Waste? Still want to…"

"Of course. Where?" She answered, her questions a whole paragraph compared to what Neal sometimes heard.

"Car?" It was if the two reverted to baby talk. As if it was indication of when they met.

"Emma… We both know what a home is." Killian said, the man behind the door infuriatingly hearing his blue eyes stare deeply into her greens.

"Finally a real sentence!" Neal drawled, striding out of the bathroom with his hazel eyes flickering with a mixture of jealously and anger.

For some reason he didn't like the mild mannered Irishman.

Maybe it was his bond with the beautiful blonde who Neal had almost rabidly coveted the moment his eyes alighted upon her. Whether it was for the sake of competition or something about her innocence he would never know.

Maybe it was his moral high ground, even as they thieved.

Maybe it was even his look, those hauntingly familiar but at the same time totally strange sapphire blue eyes and dark hair. As if for a second, he was the man, who three hundred years ago, stole his mother from his father.

"But he is right… Maybe it's time we got a real place."

"Why not? We've been on the road long enough. Maybe it's time we retire the "Bonnie and Clyde" act. So I think... I think it's time." Killian added, only getting a hard glare from Neal as the man relentlessly stole his idea.

"Together?" She asked skeptically looking at both of the overly eager men in turn.

"Don't you wanna?" Neal asked eagerly leaning forward.

"Like where, Neverland?" At that word both of the men in the room stiffened, one assaulted by lost memories and the other was attacked by the strangest feeling of missing something and dread.

"I'm serious. We could do this." Yet Neal recovered first as Killian's raven eyebrows inched further together in a troubled frown.

"Where?" Emma asked, her emerald eyes lighting up expectantly as Neal searched the room, finding that forgotten map they had shoved there last week. Picking it up, he spread it out on the bed, the entire country laying out before them.

"Where? I'll tell you where. Close your eyes and point. Whatever spot you pick...that's our home." Neal said on one side of her while Killian leaned on the other, his lips against her ear as he whispered "no peeking," before using one broad hand to cover her eyes.

She did giggle, something Emma rarely did, as her mind moved across the country sliding over Phoenix, coasting the border (if her finger landed on Mexico they would have to have a redo, of course), skirted the Gulf and stopped almost on the edge of the page, next to the blue space clearly labeled the Atlantic.

Killian spread his fingers ever so slightly as so to allow Emma to carefully read the name.

"Tallahassee." She said, tapping her finger on the point. "Is it near a beach?" Emma readjusted her glasses, an old habit from those middle school years when she didn't know the answer and lived in fear.

"Yeah, it's Florida. Everything's near a beach." Killian piped up excitedly.

"Okay, then Tallahassee it is." She said.

"Tallahassee it is." Neal answered her, and she impulsively gave him a kiss on the cheek as she ran to grab her purse, saying something about celebrating and drinks.

She didn't watch her childhood companion's face fall. Nor did she see the devious smirk her companion wore as he ushered her out.

Nor did she ask about the dark haired boy who had grown into a eager young man at the bar. Why hadn't he come? Where was he now? Were all questions she should have, would have been asking under any other circumstances. And under any other affects.

The boy went to church, the only house he had ever called his, and sat down in a pew, with the ruby rosary clutched in his two hands.

And this time, this time he went to confessional.

He didn't tell the kindly old priest, who reminded him so much of Father Matthew it hurt, all his sins. After all his old mentor had once said in a sermon "The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness." Killian had always taken it to mean that he could do what was necessary to survive, and not be punished for his crimes.

Instead he told his story. Not the story of some poor orphan who hadn't gotten a break. Not the story of some whiny teenager.

He told the priest of the boy who wanted to be a knight to a girl who wanted to get out. Told how he had taken her virginity in order to take away the suffering and then in turn followed her around hoping for more. And told how he had wanted nothing more than to keep her for himself, to allow none other than himself to even gaze upon her. Like a sinful man would do.

Yet when he asked for a penchant, begging for something—anything to take this burning out of his chest, for Emma's sake, the priest had laughed.

"What you are asking for is a cure to love, boy." He had told him kindly.

"If I get no sentence, I might destroy her." Killian responded, the fear creeping into his voice.

"Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves." The priest had said. "And the love you have for that girl… it will save you both."

Killian left the parish with rosary in hand, feeling a great deal better, returning to the apartment to find Emma passed out on one bed… Naked. And Neal nowhere in sight.

Once again the terrifying anger filled Killian, at Emma, at Neal, at himself.

Yet, he swallowed it, pulling off the blankets haphazardly covering her body, and pulled one of the oversized shirts she wore to bed over her head. Smoothing her curls back, he left the room again, filching a twenty from Neal's wallet and running to the convenience store across the street, grabbing the morning after pill that he and Emma had always forgotten to use.

He supposed it was necessary now though. From now on, he was the protector of her honor. From now on, he would not violate her wishes. From now on, he was in love with her, yet he didn't show it.

The next morning, he handed her the dull colored pill to prevent pregnancy alone with two similarly colored aspirins, as Neal still dozed on the bed. She took all three graciously, without question, much to Killian's relief.

At least Neal didn't push her again.

A week later, they had cruised down the coast, on Highway 5 through the rustic Oregon woods to the foggy hills of Northern California.

It was Sunday, of course Killian had sought out a church, while Emma grabbed donuts from a nearby coffee shop, a tradition they had kept up with since their teenage years. However, Neal got there first.

"I got doughnuts. Jelly?" She said, waving a white paper bag with her back against a tree, her voice no less bright and chipper than it would be for Killian, though her tone was about as fake as Neal's laugh. Only difference was, she called him out. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." He answered, snatching the bag and all but running to the car, where Killian stood against it with his hands awkwardly clasp behind his back.

"No, no. Hey. What's wrong?" She ran after him, pushing her black glasses stubbornly up nose as they reached the car, Killian's neutral expression changing to his lionesque protective one as Neal whirled on Emma and shoved his hand in his pocket.

Yet he didn't pull out any weapon. Still, it might as well have been.

"This was on the wall at the post office." He held up a crumpled piece of paper, showing quite accurate sketch of the man's face who was holding it. "Didn't even know they did that still." He said awkwardly shuffled from one foot to the other as the two teenagers stared bug eyed at the bold, capitalized letters spelling out WANTED.

"When did this happen?" Emma recovered her voice first, given it was meek and mild.

"I was a janitor in Phoenix... this high-end jewellery place. The manager was a drunk. He would forget to lock the case to the expensive watches." Neal said with on a grain of guilt.

"Neal..." Emma said with a plea, while Killian's eyes turned hard.

"I resisted twice. The third time, this guy's asking to get took. So I... I grabbed a couple cases of watches and I hopped on a train to Portland. The store's got insurance. Anyway, I stashed 'em in a locker at the train station. They're still there. It's hardly stealing." So that's what they were doing in Northern California.

"So you got away clean." Killian growled.

"I didn't get away clean. The manager may have been a drunk, but the security cameras are stone sober. I thought this heat had died down, but it hasn't. I'm sorry. Tallahassee's out. I gotta go to Canada." Neal said running his right hand through his hippie mane of chestnut hair.

"That's fine. I like maple syrup." Emma said with those wide set green eyes that betrayed her heart—and injured Killian's.

"I gotta go to Canada alone." He answered, leaning against the car as Killian strategically maneuvered his body so that he was standing behind her, just an arms-length and ready to catch her at a moment's notice.

"Why?" She rephrased her question.

"If I get caught, and you guys with me, you're in trouble..." He answered, moving away from the dreadfully hopeful girl.

"You're not gonna get caught." Emma persisted.

"How can you say that? You think crossing the border's easy?" Neal yelled at Emma. In that moment, Killian pushed the blonde back and stepped forward, despite her indignant cry.

"We get fake I.D.s and passports. If she wants to go of course…" he said, with the same anger and fierceness that had been brewing inside of him since they had first met him.

"Those cost money. We have a stolen car." Neal argued.

"We make it legit. We take a V.I.N. number off of another car." Emma countered, stepping out from behind her 'protector' with a glare to both men.

"Emma, I'm not gonna have you in the seat next to me with $20,000..." Neal said, putting his hand on his forehead as though to ward off a headache.

"Wait. Wait. Seriously, wait. Wait. Wait. What if we go and get the watches out of the locker? No one's looking for us. We can... we can fence them and then we have the money. We can do whatever we want. We can go wherever we want, right? We could change our identities and go to Tallahassee." She proposed with a bright smile that did nothing to lighten the storm clouds over Killian's nor Neal's faces.

"So you... you both want to steal the watches to help me with get away with stealing the watches?" Neal asked, confused, looking at Killian as if waiting to see if he would challenge Emma, as she so often spoke for them both.

"Yes. That is exactly what we'll want to do." She answered, flashing a smile at Killian who gave her a thin-lipped one in return.

"I can't let you risk everything... You think you all can do it?" Neal asked, looking at the both of them. They were so young… And if his calculations were correct he was getting in the 300's by now. Yet….

"I know I can." Emma said, before grabbing Killian's hand and dashing off.

The train station in Oakland was much larger than the one in Portland. Above their heads, a smooth voiced announcer read out the leaving of a "Tran 643" to Cleveland, D.C., and Seattle. Odd stops in Emma's mind.

However, a train wasn't her focus. As she stood in front of the lockers, Killian waited just six steps behind her, carefully watching a pair of cops discussing hours.

The row was long and a dull silver line, contrasting with the gold of her ponytail and the key as she scanned each locker before finding the correct one, sliding the key in and turning it before it clicked open.

Giving Killian a thumbs up, she snatched the bag and slammed the locker before running over to him and then running out.

Neal had parked just right outside, though his first words to the both of them were "oh, thank God," as they both slid into the passenger, Emma tossing the bag to him.

"Let's see 'em." She said impatiently and he hesitantly opened up the case.

"That's not as many as I thought." Killian commented rather stoicly, with a harsh undercurrent of suspicion at the other man.

"Yeah, but they're super pricey. This is twenty thousand dollars, easy." He said with a strange repitilian gleam to his eyes that send a shard of ice down Killian's spine. Yet, Emma said no heed, instead shrieking "Twenty thousand?!" followed by a wistful Tallahassee.

"Listen, I'm going to go meet the fence. I'll meet y'all with the money. Remember where? The parking structure by the tracks." Neal said, giving Emma a quick kiss on the cheek, before Killian could even stop him, and rushing out of the car.

"Yes." Emma smiled hanging out the window with a carefree, red-painted smile on her lips.

"Nine o'clock, sharp. This is so there's no mix-ups…" He said, before grabbing her wrist and snapped one of the watches around it, the slight snapping sounding—to Killian like the clink of handcuffs. But that was ridiculous, he thought shaking his head to ward off the remaining inklings of jealousy.

"So, I guess we're keeping this one?" She said, looking down at the ornate piece of jewelry lying elegantly around her thin, bird-like wrist.

"How can we not? Look how good it looks on you." Killian felt sick as he watched them.

"Tallahassee, baby. We're almost home." Emma stiffened at his usage of "baby," a word that sounded foreign and odd on Neal's lips as she wistfully whispered home to herself and Neal.

Neither of them watched the man walk away, driving off towards that forsaken parking garage of all places.

No one watched the man follow Neal and chase him down the alleyway.

He never saw it coming, as the other man pushed against the hood of a car before he could jump the fence.

"You got the wrong guy, officer! I wasn't even jaywalking!" Neal begged rather pitfully.

"It's not like that." The man snarled, removing his hands from between Neal's shoulders, pinning him to the car. "You want to protect Emma? Come with me."

"What?" Neal asked, slinking off of the car like a snake, the reptilian quality apparent once again. "How do you know Emma? What about Killian?"

"Name's August." The man said, crossing his arms in lieu of extending a hand "And it's a long story, but trust me – you want to hear it."

"Alright,  _August_. If you're not a cop, who are you? You got two minutes." Neal mimicked his posture, defensive with his arms crossed and brow furrowed.

"Think of me as Emma's guardian angel." He began with a rather sheepish smirk.

"Guardian angel? I'd say you've been doing a pretty crap job. Then are you what? Killian's devil's advocate?" Neal replied with all too much bite to the other man—who upon further reflection wasn't the same age as the two teenagers, but closer to his age, or a few years old.

"I've been looking for them for the past two years. Now I finally find them, and they're robbing convenience stores with some deadbeat. Tell me again who's doing the crap job." August glared him down, yet he didn't cower.

"Let me tell you something. I'm the best thing that's ever happened to Emma. Besides the kid of course, he's been her friend  _for-ev-er_. Two years? Where were you the rest of her life?"

August ran his hand through his hair, flattened as though it had been confined. "I'm not perfect. This world? Full of temptations. Turns out I'm not that great at saying no. I'm not built that way. But, I'm here now."

"So who are you?" Neal asked, more curious than angry now.

"We were in the same home as kids, and I thought she'd—and sort of he'd be safe inside the system. But now that they're out? Back then, I promised I would take care of her."

"What about Killian? I heard him promise her countless times that they would take care of each other." Neal said with blatant jealousy

"But you love her. Good. That means you have to do right by her." August said, sensing the strange dynamic that had formed around the two boys and the girl.

"That's all I'm trying to do. Save her. Them. Whatever." Neal didn't have the heart to lie. He wanted, more than anything, to be rid of Killian Jones.

"Then leave her." August ordered him.

"Never. What the hell man? Then I'd just give her up to  _him!_ He can't handle her. She'll destroy him." He vehemently snarled into August's face, yet the man merely stepped back, his countenance the epitome of calm, cool, and collected.

" _Destroy?"_ August spat incredulously. "She has a destiny. To save people. And you... this life? You're going to keep her from it. You're going to destroy her. Okay? You believe in magic?"

"I take it you do." Neal glared sarcastically back.

"So will you. Trust me. I'm going to show you something… something that's going to make you look at everything differently. And, when you see what I have in here, you're going to listen. You're going to believe every word I say." August said, pulling out a box.

"Yeah, right." Neal muttered as he peered at the contents, still unknown before his eyes widened and he looked at the other man attentively. "Okay, I'm listening."

"There's a curse... and it needs to be broken. Emma, is the key. I was tasked with keeping her on track and you, my friend, just got caught in the crossfire. Now, I'm going to tell you a story. And, at the end of it, you're going to have to make a decision. Will you do the right thing... or not? So... are you ready? Because your love ain't going to be saving  _her._ "

August's words were not intentionally deep, nor did Neal notice. But, there was something in the workings, the little blotch in the ink that gave love these two extremes, where the black line was thin between destruction and love.

Like the painted lines in the old abandoned parking structure, which Emma leaned up against pressing a cheap (stolen) cell phone up to her ear as Killian listened next to her, for the second time hearing the error message: The number you are trying to reach is out of service. If you think you've reached this message in error...

"Damn right it's an error." Emma swore, stabbing the phone and pounding the keys in the midst of redialing as Killian looked on with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

She listened to it start to ring and ring and ring again, not hearing the soft steps of the cop with his gun pointed directly at the two kids' black clad backs.

"Unless he set you up." The cop said, the bullet clicking into the chamber as both of them turned around, their eyes wide and hearts already shattering. "Hands above your heads please."

"Wait. Why?" Killian asked, befuddlement streaking his face even as he raised his hands above his head

"Possession of stolen goods. Left you holding." The cop answered, approaching them with the gun still raised.

"I have nothing." Emma said, her heart torn apart in her voice as she again realized how… truly alone they were. Everything pulled out from under their feet almost.

"Sorry to tell you guys, but the boy took off. Probably in Canada by now. He called in a tip – told us to take a look at the surveillance footage at the train station. Give me the watch. Now!" He yelled and she lowered her hands and fumbled with the watch, removing the metal cuff for another as the officer grabbed her hand and slammed another piece of silver jewelry there.

He asked if they knew their rights a question they could respond to with a nod and handed him the watch.

"Good girl. You, boy turn around." He said, roughly slamming the cuffs onto Killian as well "Where's the rest of the watches?"

She got a distant look in her eyes, broken, lost and alone, as another squad car pulled in and a chubby officer got out and frisked Killian who turned a stormy blue eye before growling "They're gone. They're not coming back."

Led to different cars, she took one last look at him. Lost, broken, and alone met longing, dejected and betrayed before at the same time they mouthed "I'm sorry."

Pushed into the car, she whispered mostly to herself "I couldn't save him."

And crammed in the backseat of another, he said so that anyone could hear "I destroyed her."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to suggest any novels you want me to base chapters on! Next time: Game of Thrones.


	5. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by G.R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and the television show Game of Thrones...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank my two lovely friends/betas Montana-rosalie (who gave me some of the GREATEST ideas for this chapter) and naiariddle (sweetest person ever she will tear out your heart with her ideas too).
> 
> This chapter is a mixture of Tallahasse and Heart of the Truest Believer. Please don't hate me for it, but you should have known it was coming when I mentioned this would be a Game of Thrones inspired chapter.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at ladyswaninsists.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Nor do I own any of the amazing literature I borrow from.

_Five_

_Lost and Found_

" _I crossed a thousand leagues to come to you, and lost the best part of me along the way. Don't tell me to leave."_

She was sent to Phoenix, the universe having a cruel sense of humor as they dragged her back to the place where Neal had taken the watches.

He was shipped to upstate New York, probably because of his driver's license alone, rather than the crime.

The first time she smiled was when he sent her a letter. It was also the first time she cried, at least in prison.

And then there was the ache. Like her heart was going apart and trying to stretch across the country towards him with each elegantly scripted word it strung out the pink intestines over the map.

It was full of apologies, which she wrote bad in kind, it not hurting any less when he received the letter. How their bond had wilted behind the grey and gunmetal what was once full of such vibrancy, went stark.

Emma was lucky, as Killian always thought. Partly because of the moronic judge had been steadfast that Killian had stolen the watches from Neal, cluelessly he did rule, while Emma was a unsuspecting accomplice.

Who got 11 months in a minimum security prison as Killian went to a hardened penitentiary for a year.

Or so they thought.

It didn't take but a month for Emma to get sick. She at first thought it was the horrible food, then the hot desert air. Yet, she knew.

By far, she was the youngest at the prison. The older women did ask questions, how a pretty young thing like her ended up in prison though she kept to herself.

Until one of the cooks slipped her a pregnancy test and told her to take it. That no girl was sick for this long.

Behind bars, she clutched the white thing, looking longingly at the metal table where the light cast a crossed shadow on the white papers, covered in black ink.

Sniffling, she looked at the guard opening the door clutching a brown envelope as Emma's heart rate sped up. It wasn't how Killian sent his mail. Who the hell would care about her  _now?_ Even he shouldn't when…

Emma dropped the test as she put her head in her hands.

"Swan, you got mail. Know anyone in Phuket? I've got to open this in front of you. Those are the rules." The woman said thrusting the envelope towards her. She took it her hands shaking as the guard picked up the test and gave her a pitying look.

"Okay. " She chirped and the woman holds up a set of keys. Car keys.

"Look. Car keys. Hope you got the car it goes with." The woman shook the envelope, yet nothing else came out. "Nothing else. No letter. Sorry. But good news. You get a car when you get out. And a baby. Congratulations." She gave her one more look that made Emma want to scream, cry, and die all at the same time.

Yet, all she could do was silently gasp a sorry at the positive test on the ground.

Like Emma, Killian was the youngest at the prison. Not by a lot, but enough to make him a target to lecherous druggies, fierce gang leaders, and every type of sleazy character he could imagine. The good Catholic boy in him told him that everyone could be saved, yet the darker parts of him, which had manifested only since fucking  _Neal_ had shown up told him that there were some people who couldn't be saved.

The physical punishments weren't too bad. Of course, the guards did nothing about it, yet Killian could hold out on his own. And they knew it.

Sleep had been the one place he could see Emma. Touch her hair, hear her laugh, see her smile. He trusted the solace of it to take him other places, to lull him into the false sense of safety he should have never had.

It was a convicted rapist, drug dealer, and money launderer, men who Killian had been silently watching for going on a few months now, as they had, in very few words, planned a break out and partnership.

They hadn't noticed him, no one ever did, yet somehow, they found out.

With a knife, so unlike the men they pretended to be, they hadn't finished the job.

He woke up as burning pain ran up his right hand.

There was a haze in his mind after that, with only brief flashes of things like his severed hand lying in a pool of blood on the ground, or the men fleeing. He knew who they were though he couldn't speak their names. Like the mindless never ending soundless scream that came from his mouth had replaced all rational thought.

Though he still found some sort of strength with the remaining to fumble for the rosary and pray for forgiveness, as Killian's hazy brain at least had the sense to realize how close the specter of Death was.

Whether he was dead or unconscious from blood loss, was the guards' question as they found the near corpse in his own cell, with his roommate gone. They were not unkind men, they were fathers and Christians, seeing the mere boy's shattered innocence in the form of hand astray and one threaded in the ruby red stones of blood and a rosary.

Killian woke up in a mess of bandages in a hospital a few days later, the phantom limb teasing at his nerves. But, what surprised him most was the utter lack of cold metal chains on any part of his person.

The detective who was charged with Killian's case was from NYPD, though he had a slight Yorkshire accent dominated by one of a Londoner, though Killian knew nothing. He was rather nice in the boy's opinion. Didn't treat him like a criminal, told him that was sorry for his loss the first time he introduced himself.

And then he said the oddest thing.

"You're not a criminal."

"Considering I was behind bars, you have to be thick Officer." He had retorted, trying to sit up though failing.

"Killian… I know what real criminals look like. Like those men." He said, giving a nod to the satisfying mug shots splayed all over the rolling table across Killian's lap. "You're just a kid."

"I'm eighteen!" He protested, scowling at the usage of his name. Still the DI ignored him.

"You're a good kid who just got caught in the crossfire. I'm sorry. Is there anyone I can call to come and sit with you?" Killian shook his head. And then the man gave him the most disbelieving look.

"Parents?" He asked, taking out a chunky Nokia phone.

"I'm an orphan." The dark haired boy muttered not meeting the man's eyes.

"I'm going to go deal with the paperwork of arresting these bastards. I'll be back." He put his hand over Killian's in the first kind gesture he had gotten since Emma had been torn from his grasp.

"Officer before you go…" Killian grunted, pushing himself up from the fluffy pillows again, the color draining from his face.

"Greg." He said with a flash of white teeth.

"There is someone you could call…" He said before asking for an old priest at the parish in the City. When the man asked how he knew the old man, that he had been going to that church for a couple of years.

"He brought me and Emma up." Killian answered him a faraway look in his eyes, where an image of fair skin, gold hair, and emerald eyes danced. He didn't even hear Greg's next question of "who's Emma?"

She hadn't told him about the baby, but now she wished she had. More so that he could be the person holding her hand and letting her squeeze rather than some bored nurse. Though Emma couldn't tell him that she didn't know who the father was. Emma couldn't tell him why she was giving the baby up.

Because Killian saw her as some glittering figure shrouded in light, when really she was anything but.

When the pains had started, sharp and stabbing pains starting in her abdomen and then spreading to every corner of her body, she didn't cry out in pain. Emma curled up on the narrow cot and clutched at the silver swan necklace with one hand and let the other on the rounded stomach, an offensive part of her body she didn't  _ever_ try and touch.

_No, no, no, no._ She thought to herself between the aggravatingly increasing stabs.

It had been going on for ten hours in a rising and falling action, like a slight harmonic symphony, before a guard finally came and checked, when she didn't show up for dinner. She took one look at the slight blonde, heard her labored breathing, and sent her to the prison hospital.

The clock struck the weary hour of 8:15 in the morning as she went in and out of consciousness, the blue polyester gown drenched in sweat, the terror that had ripped through her came to a head.

It was only then where the blonde lost her resolve, freely letting tears stream down her face, the person's name who she was begging for forgotten, whether it started with a K or a N she would never be sure.

"Big breath. Breathe away, breathe away" The doctor told her, attempting at being soothing, while probably slightly overwhelmed and exhausted at the girl's sixteen hour hysteria. A nurse bustled to the end of the bed, where Emma's legs where chained together and rudely looked up her gown, to look at the almost grotesque expanded femininity.

"Okay, here we go." She said, before giving Emma the order to push, something that seemed almost Herculean though she somehow complied.

"You're doing great. Hang on, hang on." The doctor reassured her, though the words barely brushed her mental haze. There was only pain.

The sharp stabs from her abdomen.

The sleek straining cuts from the cuffs.

The tearing heartache from her loss.

She didn't want to feel anything at all, though she felt everything and more.

"You're almost there." The kinder of the two nurses told her, taking her white hand from where it clutched the hospital bed and let Emma nearly break her own. "Just keep breathing."

"You're doing fantastic. That's it. Breath, breath, breath! Doing great. You're doing great. Here you go. Keep going. Yep. Breathe, breathe. Take a deep breath. Okay big push, big push." The doctor gave her a pep talk, from between her legs Emma thought rather sarcastically. If she could think of course, as she finally,  _finally_ screamed. "Push, push, push!"

She didn't realize the lights had flickered and then blew out as she gave one final screaming push. Then that helpless cry filled the room while Emma collapsed back onto the bed sighing in exhaustion and relief.

Only then did her eyes find the baby, in the doctor's arms, still covered in blood— _her blood_ giving those mewling cries that made tears fill her eyes and her arms start to tingle, begging to hold it.

"Great. Here we go. That's good. That's beautiful." The doctor said, cradling the child in his arms and looking down on it with a kind look he must wear a thousand times a day. "How you doing?" he asked the baby with a smile, before turning to the girl in the bed trying so hard not to cry. "It's a boy, Emma."

She averted her eyes, not wanting to see the boy— _her baby boy._ Yet, he still imprinted in her mind. Not his qualities, sure, later, she would remember how he had a small head covered in dark down (whether it was brown or black she didn't know). What she saw (and felt) in that moment was his vulnerability. He was defenseless—against her especially.

Emma couldn't save herself, much less a child.

And like all things she touched, they broke.

"Emma?" The doctor asks, as if waiting for her to have an epiphany and smile, to take her child in her arms. To do the selfish thing.

Yet, the girl shakes her head, still clutching the white plastic railing of the bed, openly letting salty tears stream down her sweaty face as a nurse whispers in the doctor's ear.

"Oh. Emma, just so you know, you can change your mind." He gently told her, taking a step forward.

Taking one gasping sob she expelled the truth "No, I can't be a mother." And then his face fell and she wept for no reason and every reason in the world.

Yet, when she woke up she could only think of one.

He had blue eyes…

The second time the young, and oddly cheery DI came back to visit Killian he spilled everything. Not for any other reason except that he wanted those bastards found, caught, dead, returned to the hellhole he was probably destined to return to, though he had no intention of not fighting against it.

He was a sneak, a spy, a mole who had been collecting information without even knowing it, all of which the man took down with haste, an eager gleam in his eyes that wasn't unkind to Killian, but rather with an angry bloodlust towards the criminals.

Killian wasn't sure if the policeman cared about him, yet it was nice for someone to actually care.

The third time he came back he brought a friend. A man who blatantly cried when he saw the skeletal boy in the bed, glaring at his stump of an arm with darkness he had never seen on his face.

"I'm sorry. Please forgive me, Killian, if I had known…" Father Matthew told the boy man lying in the bed.

"As long as you beg the good Father for my repentance, then you have no need to apologize to me, Matty." Killian drawled, his sapphire blue eyes oddly lifeless in the stark white lighting.

"No Killian. I let you get into this… If I had just let Emma stay with you…" He chastised himself as Killian leapt to life, at the mere mention of the "E" word.

"You should have! Now, she ruined! I wrecked her." He snarled at the priest, his voice going from a roar to a whisper. "She went to jail because of me. I couldn't protect her."

"Mr. Jones, the file here says that you were arresting for the possession of stolen goods. Yet, you didn't steal them. And the guy who gave you the one watch, which was found on the woman, gave the tip." Greg said, pulling out a manila file from his jacket. "I don't see anything that you did wrong, besides probably minor robbery."

"Not near enough to warrant your sentence, son." Matthew piped up, as the old man creaked and then relaxed into the stiff hospital chair.

"So have I paid my debts?" Killian asked sarcastically. The priest and the officer exchanged a look.

"Not exactly…" Father Matthew said, glancing at Greg.

"How do you feel about the NYPD, Killian?" He asked, with one of those smiles told Killian he didn't have much of a choice. He didn't mind of course, but he couldn't resist slipping in a snarky remark.

"Horrible, they're all wankers." He said with a shit eating grin that Greg returned as the older priest sharply inhaled.

He was released into the guardianship of one Matthew Emrys, three days later. He rode in the front seat of the black parish Cadillac for the first time in his life, into the city where the lights didn't see to shine as brightly as he remembered.

The next day, after being secluded into one of the three small bedrooms in the apartments on the far side of the Parish, he forced the Father to leave, with an order for Emma's release in one hand and a painstakingly written letter from him in the other.

He then, to be blunt, threw himself at the New York Police Department Headquarters, imposing in its grey stoned glory as he stumbled up the steps to where "Greg" (whose badge  _finally_ gave him a last name—Lestrade) waited for him in the lobby, glancing around every couple of seconds, his eyes connecting with the door and then with the hallways around him.

"Didn't think you were going to show up Killy!" He practically shouted across the foyer, finally spotting the dark-haired boy tentatively pushing open the glass doors and bounded over him, like a Lab puppy. He gave him a good-natured slap on the back and basically dragging him down the white tiled halls—that reminded the boy all too much of the prison and the hospital and down a flight of stairs. "Now we don't have an actual program set up for you, but I called in a couple of favors." And then mostly to himself he muttered "if the dick actually would show up."

They eventually reached a brown metal door, in the basement, down a dimly lit hallway that only moderately terrified Killian.

"It's a bit of a ways down, but we have the den for a reason of course. And don't be scared of him." The Inspector ordered Killian before banging open the door without any ceremony, striding into the starkly lit, massive room, that seemed like more of a bunker that part of a police headquarters. A tall man stood with his back to Killian, on the gym mats centered in the middle of the room, at odds with a punching bag in the center.

It wasn't his height that struck Killian first, rather the man's stance. Purely defensive, he almost bristled at the banging of the door, like a man ready for a fight at a moment's notice. If this place was called "the den," this man was the Lion guarding it.

"Oi! Where were you? You were supposed to meet us upstairs!" Greg yelled rather good naturedly yelled, slamming the door behind him as Killian edged around the corner of the room.

"That was today?" The man whirled around, his blonde hair fanning out behind him like a shampoo commercial, though he was anything but a model. Besides the accent of course, he was rather beaten in appearance with faded Scars ornamenting a once handsome face, like cracks in a marble Grecian Adonis, though it looked as though he had attempted to hide some of them, behind an almost wild blonde beard of the same shade as the neat mane on his head.

Then his striking grass green eyes found the boy, a shade far different from Emma's, which bored into him as hers always did, finding the awkward limb he held so limply at his side instantly.

Killian expected a grunt, a growl, something to indicate this giant didn't want a useless crippled criminal to train.

"Well, I could use a hand." He said with a sardonic smirk, and held out his left hand for Killian to shake. He stared at it for a second, before going for it with his decidedly weak left hand.

"Sorry ser." Killian almost squeaked, looking back at Greg who gave him an encouraging smile. "I'm sure the detective told you about my predicament, but I mean I can still work, just because I'm a cripple…"

The man's eyes flashed at the word, his expression turning for easy resignation, to near fury.

"It's best there's two hands around here then, boy." He then said icily, his face calming only a bit after he was sent a warning look from behind as he flopped his own right hand at his side, calling attention to the neat sleeve that was pinned back.

Killian's blue eyes widened and he looked back at the officer with a questioning look, as if a handless man could teach him anything at all.

"The Den's sort of an underground part of the facility for the inspectors. Sniffing out illegal traffic, tips, the like." He explained, striding over to one of the multiple blinking machines and pulling open a drawer. "Also, it serves as the department's unofficial bar." He took a swig from a bottle of scotch before returning it to its place as his phone rang. Taking it out for a second, he saw the caller ID and promptly ran out of the room, leaving the two handless men together.

"So when do we start sir?" Killian piped up, sounding all too much like the child he once was than the hardened criminal he had become.

"You know how to use a computer, Killian?" he asked, directing Killian towards one of the blockish machines on one of the desk.

"Yes sir." He said, sitting at the table as the man began to explain the long winded process of tracking criminals, all which apparently could be done one handed. As he walked away, no doubt towards a ringing telephone on the other side of the room, he turned back to gaze as the boy hunched over the work.

"And Killian?" Killian looked up, chirping another "Yes sir?" at him, causing the man to cringe.

"It's Jaime. Not sir."

It was a day before Emma was released from the hospital.

It was a week before a guard came in and told her, as bluntly possible, "looks like your sentence is up Swan."

Confused as ever, the blonde obeyed mutely, as she had been since she had watched the blue eyed baby go.

She was astonished to see a black clothed old man waiting for her at the gate, with tears in his eyes.

"Oh Emma…" He cried, assaulting her with a hug, which she (logically) stiffened under, yet slowly moved her arms around him, to return it.

"How'd you get me out?" She asked, her voice scratchy from disuse and tears.

"Killian…" the old priest attempted to start the sentence though Emma never let him finish.

"Where is he?" She demanded, the old fire briefly coming back into her eyes yet retreating as soon as it appeared as she saw his crestfallen expression. "What's wrong? Is he dead?"

"Oh no, not that." He rushed, flustered. Matthew wasn't lying of course, what priest would lie, yet Emma supposed omission was a lie as well. "You just might be surprised when you see him, that's all."

She had wracked her brain for every possibility of difference in Killian, hell how hadn't prison changed people, yet she still came up with nothing. Incessantly, she pestered Father Matthew when they inspected the old yellow VW bug that Neal had left her, finding the cash in the seat (which Emma took, served the damn bastard right), when they sold said bug, when the boarded the plane to New York.

Of course, Emma wasn't a quiet person, yet there were periods where she didn't speak at all, trying so hard to forget the child, the closed adoption, the sickening revulsion she had for herself—that she had done the thing that had so screwed up her. Though she prayed, prayed that the child—where ever he was, would have a happy home and never ask "why did she give me up?"

Killian didn't have to know, not now, she decided as she walked through the familiarly welcoming doors of the parish. The father led her a different way, towards his private apartments in the other wing, which did not look unlike any other New York apartment. Three bedrooms and a pretty standard size, with oddly, all the lights odd.

"Killian?" He called quietly, though there was no answer. "He must still be at work. Why don't you unpack?"

It wasn't very thinly veiled, the hint to sleep, which Emma took, comforted at the thought of finally having a real mattress to sleep on. Yet, when she changed, she burst into tears, still seeing the rounded outline of her stomach against the virginal white of the lace gown, the exact styling she had been wearing since she was three years old.

The mirror showed a girl, barely 18, made of glass with tears shining like liquid silver in the moonlight for a second before a dark shadow, like a cloud over a star, appeared behind her.

"Emma?" He asked, and the woman turned and gasp, her face contorted into a mask of rage.

"Go. Away." She snarled at him, his boy's expression turned from disbelief and delight to heartbroken, sorrowful, hurt.

"Emma…" He pleaded, taking a step towards her, only for her to fall back, her back pressed up against the cool glass.

"Don't Emma me!" she cried, her tears still not dry since the day she had watched what seemed like a mirror of this man go. "You left me." Her voice was small, with no less anger as before.

He wasn't mad when he backed her into the corner, rather desperate in his whole movements as he loomed over her in a predatory stance, blue eyes flashing a near black in the dark.

"I crossed a thousand leagues to come to you, and lost the best part of me along the way. Don't tell me to leave." Killian pleaded with her. Then her mask dropped, as it always had before with him, yet the face underneath had changed so much.

Emma's eyes perused his body, finally finding the difference in this broken man from the hopeful boy from eight months ago.

"Your hand…" She whispered the apology never said, but obvious in her tone, and he ducked his head in shame, eyes finally coming in contact with the deflated protrusion of her stomach. His mouth fells open and clumsily his left hand came in contact with it, even though Emma flinched and began to sob all over again.

He could still take her in his arms, as he always had been able too, cradling her weeping face against his chest and saying nothing at all, the phrase she had managed to gasp out "it's gone."

Killian didn't question who was the father, just held his the girl as she cried herself out and fell exhausted and weak onto the pillow.

He didn't sleep next to her, instead sitting on the edge of the bed to watch her aimless staring at the ceiling and soundless words, wan, waxed fingers moving over blood red beads. When she finished her prayers, her green eyes met his for the first time, a jolt going between them.

"He had blue eyes." She told him, her face blank and miserable before snapped her eyes shut.

At least Emma didn't watch him cry. Who would have thought a crippled criminal would cry over a color?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to suggest any novels you want me to base chapters on! I hope you don't think of me as too heartless! Next time: Sherlock.


	6. New York's Fairy Tales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the BBC television show, Sherlock...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank my two lovely friends/betas Montana-rosalie (who has completely fostered my GOT obsession and brought some amazing things into this fic) and naiariddle (such a kind person who gives incredible feedback).
> 
> You might recognize some of the characters in this chapter, so I would like to say I don't own anyone.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at ladyswaninsists.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Nor do I own any of the amazing literature I borrow from.

_Six_

_New York's Fairy Tales_

" _Don't make people into heroes, John. Heroes don't exist, and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them."_

_Summer of 2001_

"You know, those things will kill you." A new voice from the shadows penetrated the haze of gray smoke that filled the den, the silhouettes of the men shrouded in it, bent over a table covered in paper and cigarette butts. A single figure clutched a computer board, his fist clenched around a half full bottle of amber liquid that stop a sip of for each drag of the cigarette.

Killian rolled his eyes, knowing the phrase well from Father Matthew's judging preaching and Emma's frustrated mutterings, not caring who the hell spoke instead looking over at the computer, displaying a series of photos.

Jaime took a defiant drag from the cigarette in response, stabbing one key of the monitor causing the ancient printer to roar to life, stunning the short man in the corner nursing a hangover, the gruesome papers falling to the floor only to be picked up by a man who clumsily spilled his whisky in the process.

And the third man, the chain smoker, the man with the four packs of cigs in his desk drawer, D.I. Lestrade froze in the middle of lighting his fourth of the night.

Throwing it on the concrete floor, he turned around and raised his hand, whether to strike the smirking dark-haired man in the dark grey coat.

"YOU BASTARD!" He yelled, his dark eyes flashing, fingers itching to grab the black gun at his hip while the "bastard" walked towards him, black dress shoes making defiant echoes.

"It's time to come back. You've been letting things slide, Graham." He said, with a sardonic smirk. Killian glanced at Jaime, who was merely watching the spectacle with too much of a smile, extremely confused.

"Greg!" He corrects him, his pale British face darkening to a red.

"Greg." The dark haired man says, his colorless—and colorful eyes turning a pale grey, the color of the smoke around them. They stared at each for a moment, as Greg as grimacing, pink chapped lips curling back to reveal pure white teeth and lunged towards the other man.

It wasn't like he was trying to choke him, but he might as well have been, wrapping his arms around his neck and pulls him into a tight hug. The other man groans rather comically, but tolerates the sudden burst of affection.

"Why'd you leave London? Competency is one thing Scotland Yard is severely lacking at the moment." The man said, leaping almost like a dancer into a comfortable sitting position in a spinning chair, in practically the exact center of the room.

"You know why Sherlock." He said his eyes sad and distant as the other man's had been.

"Well it looks like." Sherlock said, snatching up the papers that the redheaded man had thrown on the table, with an ignorance of common courtesy that only he seemed to have, "You've made considerably smarter colleagues." He surveyed the piles of notes, detailing the four victims of the strange series. The oddest thing that Killian had dealt with so far, in his short couple of months.

"What do you mean? Anderson and Donovan were plenty smart!" Lestrade argued, taking the print outs away from the oddly hyperactive Brit.

"At running around at your orders. These" He said, waving at the group, Jaime scowling at the flippant tone and slightly moving his stump to his right side, searching for an object that wasn't there. "Think." He tapped the large words scrawled over half the map, in Killian's messy handwriting, that had once been so elegant.

FAIRY TALES.

"So which one of you monkeys want to help me? Who had this bright idea of 'fairy tales?'" He sneered, glancing at the photos.

No one spoke, though it was plain to see it was Killian, as he found a sudden interest in his shoes and everyone was looking at him.

"Well, what makes you think that life is a fairy tale" He turned his glare onto him and Killian gulped, before steeling his resolve. He wasn't going to let some twit civilian cost him everything. Nor beat him down in that regard. He had had enough of that to last a lifetime.

"If you look at the evidence, they're all girls, college age." He started, pointing out the grisly murders on the map. "This one was murdered in her sleep hours after she received a lethal dose of poison at a club." Indicating a fair blonde in the Upper West side found about four nights ago. "The second was found drowned and, post-mortem, her legs chopped off." He moves his hand, over to the design district where the redhead had been discovered. "And last night's was found strangled with her own hair. Sir, one- it's an incident, twice- it's coincidence and three times? It's a pattern." For a second the man looked in complete and utter shock, before the light bulb turned on and his eyes flashed a curious shade of blue-green.

Then he's shouting orders, asking for things that Killian doesn't have the slightest idea what they are, though Lestrade huffs and puffs his way through them. The only person who remains sitting, doing nothing, is Jaime, who scowls at the man taking control of  _his_ job.

"You, get me the coroner's report" Sherlock said, peering at the mock ups of how the bodies were found, not noticing the small hung over man from the corner sneaking out, and waving a hand in Jaime's general direction.

"Get it yourself." He sullenly retorted, taking another one handed drag from the low cigarette, it only being a stub now. The civilian took a second to look up, his eyes quite serious, while his expression had lapsed into that of someone watching a poodle trying to act like a St. Bernard.

"Please spare me your infuriatingly rebellious attitude and get me the papers." He said, saying the please in a sickly sweet tone, that made Killian turn to watch the stand-off.

Jaime didn't have what would be called, control of his temper. Quite irrational at times, the man lacked the calculated planning that his brother, the shorter man who worked for the FBI—something with analysis—seemed to have bred into him.

"No." He said, snuffing out the cigarette before meeting Sherlock's eyes, hardened caged emerald boring into him. "I don't take orders anymore. I give them, when I have to…" He trailed off, the "not anymore" almost fading on his lips as the other men in the room, really boys, a handful of years older the Killian stopped, and looked nervously at each other.

"Really?" Sherlock had completely stopped what he was doing and now regard the officer with his analytical eyes. Lestrade hesitantly moved forward, as if almost ready to break up a fight. "And who would follow orders from a man like you?"

"There are no men like me. Only me." The phrase would have not sounded so profound had there not been the weary tone of familiarity to it, the burden that laid on some of the lion's words that Killian never had the courage to ask. The detective, as Lestrade finally had jumped in and explained, dropped the matter for a total of ten minutes, before picking up the conversation as though they had never dropped it.

"You're right… I've never met a character like you before. Iraq or Afghanistan?" He said in a conversational tone, that caused Jaime to stiffen over the print outs.

"Neither."

"Then where were you captured? You must be older than you look… Korea?" Sherlock pressed, only again to get a firm no, this time the resolve in Jaime's eyes being replaced with an odd emotion, fear.

"Can't you just fuck off?" one of the men in the corner yelled, Jon probably, Killian couldn't tell in the dark lighting. "It's none of your business what any of our pasts are, just get the fucking job done."

The detective gives the group, tense to a point of apprehension, a sadistic smile that would resemble the Grinch more than anything.

That's when his weak interest turned back to the papers that the boy had tossed on the table and then all but ran away, standing at alert off to the side, in a silent prayer not to be called on, picked out, exploited.

Sherlock took one look at the page, not paying any attention to Killian, instead calling that the next murder was in progress. No details, just "someone's going to die tonight."

No one else reacted except for Lestrade, who seemed to almost have an panicked reaction, throwing himself on the phone and calling for complete back up.

The detective gave Killian one nod in the all the chaos and almost led him through the door, with Lestrade yelling after him "I need a location Sherlock!"

They were already hopping into a taxi before he said anything, popping his dark colored collar and letting his light eyes dancing in a different city's lights.

"How are we going to save that girl?" Killian finally asked and the man looked over at him in annoyance.

" _We_ are not saving anyone. You are merely here to help me with my thought process." He retorted not casting any look at the boy, who was already fingering his dark jet black gun.

"How do you expect to stop a psychotic murderer who has been brutally slashing up girls with words, Mr. Holmes?" The boy hissed, his curious blue eyes sparking with a madness that hinted at another side of him, that he didn't even know existed at all.

"I don't expect to stop him with words… I expect nothing." He says in his cold apathetic tone as the taxi maneuvers its way through the hellish streets, all lit up with neon and soot. "I've been chasing this man a long time boy…"

"Killian."

"And in this time I've learned one thing." He exited the car, the young officer following him once again only to be barred by an arm, encased in navy wool. "Don't be a hero, boy. A friend once tried to make me one. And then he realized they didn't exist."

Killian's eyes went wide, big and blue under the night sky, however, paying little heed to their location.

"But every fairy tale needs a villain. Why can't there be a hero?"

Sherlock looked at Killian, a pitying and then suddenly confused look on his face, like he couldn't find the last piece of a puzzle.

"Since when is life a fairy tale?"

The NYPD was, in the detective's opinion, much quicker than Scotland Yard ever was. The boy outside had been well, noisy, in trying to break down the door.

Moriarty had not had a single scene for his fourth act. No, in true Shakespearian manner he left open wounds.

Many might have once said that he wasn't human. On the contrary, he was quite human, beating heart and all that, though he still took the time to check the pulses of the two girls in the freezer. Though there was no sign of the culprit when he dragged the pair.

They were young, teenaged, with similar features that surely marked them as sisters, despite the vibrant differences in hair color, the taller's being a shock of fire, and the younger's a brief mask of darkness. For a moment he gave the girls a look, like maybe he should call for back up or wake them.

But as the kid said, there's always a villain.

A level up in that foreboding warehouse was all glass, almost mirror light, and what more polite people would call a greenhouse. Still Sherlock was sure that people didn't just grow roses. Or only let them grow on a girl.

Each breath of hers was a gasp in the night's air, with little energy for anything else, though her eyes pleaded for release, though he paid little heed. The detective was much too close to his prey to stop now.

If he were to be honest, he pitied the women in the game. But, he could see Moriarty's fingers in this plot, whether he had cheated death as he had so elegantly done or it was his plan set into motion by one of his cronies, was no matter.

They all must die.

Back up took their sweet time, as Killian trained his gun on the door, his internal clock making this irksome ticking noise that make his finger pull lovingly on the trigger.

When "the others" arrived, Jaime took one look at the compound, and kicked down the door. He hadn't even been known for his grace in the division, rather his eagerness.

The first floor was icy, with two girls sprawled on the ground, closer to the door and some form of heat.

Apparently, according to the frantic radioing to the force outside, they were related to the guys who were helping out back at the station, Jaime's friends. Sisters, though they couldn't look less alike, despite what looked like pure ice covering their clothes.

Lestrade loaded the younger one, unconscious one, onto a stretcher, who her sister had hoarsely identified as Arya, without as much as a pulse check and rushed her away, while the elder, the redhead lay on the ground, shivering with the officer slowly approaching her, as if she was a caged wolf.

"My lady?" He asks quietly, resting a hand on her shoulder, with that odd address, a title Killian meant to ask him about later. "Dammit she's cold." Jaime wasn't talking to anyone in particular, just moving his hands up and down her arms, in an attempt to either keep her warm or find a pulse Killian wasn't sure. "And not breathing…"

"SHE'S NOT BREATHING!" He yelled, feeling her neck for her weak pulse. "You can't die. Not now. Not after everything. I promised to protect you. And now that she's gone…. I can't let you die."

His mouth was on hers in seconds, his breaths making her chest rise and fall. Killian watched from the doorway to the next room where officers stood, debating how to disentangle a girl encased in roses, thorns digging into every inch of skin she had.

Screams seemed to stay in the place, an endless echoing that bounced off walls and seemed to trail higher and higher before coming back down to rest on the ground. Then the dreadful cycle started again.

The explosion echoed too, with the foreboding sound of shattering glass and the dreadful symphony of screams that accompanied it. There were high clear thread from the rose girl and short gasping sobs from "the lady," but that wasn't what set Killian running through the shaking warehouse.

"Where is she? Is she safe?" She begged, tossing and turning in Jaime's stoic arms, even as her body shook with the effort.

It was another sound, quiet crying mixed with a Latin prayer that echoed from the rafters, that haunted him. It couldn't be…

Lestrade fell to the ground with an angry shout—and swear as Killian pushed him out of the way, taking the stairs four two at a time, skipping right back the room where a wisp of a women lay, burns trailing up her arms, in a pit of smoking sand. She moaned, and sat up, nearly sobbing at the effort, yet Killian knew someone was close behind him, their footsteps echoing from the stairwell. He couldn't stop now.

It was the top floor, why did I always have to be the fucking top floor, where  _she_ was. A vision in a white nightdress and a nightmare in red blood, glass had replaced her skin. Standing completely straight, the girl grimaced in pain while blood from the cuts on her arms, legs, stomach, and everywhere pooled around the glass shoes that encased her feet.

"Emma?" Killian breathed, a question he could already answer as he picked his way through the white minefield at a pace a step away from a run

Her green eyes fluttered open, and her rosebud lips, stained with crimson, paused in mid-word. The smile that graced her face was a mixture, of relief, of hope, of pain yet she still made a hesitant step towards him, even as he skidded to a halt to watch.

It was only one step, but the shoes shattered in Hollywood finesse. For a second, she floated in midair, her smile turning to a horrified look of shock and a desperate scream of his name.

Then she fell. The fall was graceful how she landed was not, in that painful mess of metal and crystal.

The world muted, as she did, a tangled body whose life force now reflected off the night sky. Green eyes empty and somewhere far away, huddled in the stars. He didn't know what to do, vainly wondered if he was too late as Killian searched for a pulse from the girl in his arms.

According to the doctors, he hadn't been.

A minute early, they said, before she would have bled out. A miracle, they said, even as they shoved the breathing tube down her throat.

Sherlock—and their criminal, had disappeared as quickly as they had arrived, and for some reason, Lestrade had given up the chase. Though Killian suspected it was for no other reason than the fact that everyone on the case had taken to living at the hospital.

Jaime's friends weren't "officially" on the force, but they were better than half of the donut munching "normal" officers upstairs. Killian found them odd, so different it seemed impossible they were brothers. Robb, the redhead and a Political Science major at NYU, was loud, with a joke always on his lips, and a twinkle in his blue eyes, while the other, Jon, the hotshot Criminology major, was solemn, pensive, and whenever he opened his mouth, he usually had a point. They had younger ones too, a kid, not quite a teenager but no longer a child in a wheelchair that was even more quiet than Jon, and a kid, who seemed to talk a minute, with two missing front teeth.

The Starks had an undying devotion, though he reasoned, and an absence of parents that seemed to only exacerbate the bond.

It wasn't just to their family, no, the odd little group seemed to rotate between the four rooms.

Another man came in no less than five minutes after the police cruiser was haphazardly parked in front of the emergency section, as young as all the rest, though quite a deal older than the teenaged girl, with an angry expression on his face, shouting so that all the hospital could hear, in some language Killian couldn't quite comprehend. And then he was silent, barely saying anything to anyone, just a sentry next to the youngest girl—Arya's bedside.

That girl, the fighter her brothers lovingly dubbed her woke not a day after the man feel asleep in the chair. And then that's when the flood came.

She was an angry little thing, nearly snarling at the nurses and doctors, pushing them out of the way and telling them she was fine. And the questioning, that was horribly tedious, with her asking every five minutes if they could leave and the only answer they got from her was a question.

"What's his name?" She glared, staring down the  _extremely_ uncomfortable Jaime, who had politely averted his eyes.

"Miss Stark, if you could just tell us what he looked like it would rather helpful…" Killian said as politely as he could.

"You couldn't catch him if you tried, boy." Arya gave him a look and then returned to boring into Jaime. "I on the other hand…"

"No." He said firmly, lifting his eyes to still be averted from hers, falling on the frail body across the hall, where her sister lay as she had for the past two days, the only color in the entire room being her volatile mane of red hair. "Arya…" This time it was a warning look and a quick glance at Killian. "You can't hunt down a man. You're too young for that. And you owe it to your  _family_ to not go off completing some new list." He hissed, not quite low enough for Killian not to hear without straining his hearing.

"You know nothing of revenge, Kingslayer." Her harrowing grey eyes burned into him. And that's when he finally looked at her, the Lady's rage dwarfing in comparison to the green flames filling his eyes sockets.

"Wrong, Arya." Jaime told her, getting up, the anger transforming into regret in a second. "I know more than any man would. I just know when it's useless."

Killian found that the more and more Jaime—or any of his "friends" spoke, the less and less they made sense.

Arya was the only one awake though, of the five girls from the warehouse, all of whom only bore one connection to each other.

It hadn't been clear at first, given Emma's obvious 'connection' to Killian and the familial ties of the Stark siblings in the investigation, the connection of the two remaining girls, the Rose one, who Robb Stark had promptly IDed as Margaery Tyrell, and the Sand girl, with nearly translucent skin save for the angry red burns marring the alabaster surface, who had an extremely long and complex name. Her room referred to her as D. Targaryen. Jon merely addressed her as Dany, muttering the name like a prayer at her bedside.

Emma stayed on life support, as doctors worked their magic on the thousands of cuts marring her elegant body, her stunning face. She needed plastic surgery they had said, to the overworked and under slept Killian, three nights after the accident. After the internal bleeding finally ceased.

Miraculously, they kept everything. Didn't change her nose or her facial structure. It just blended in like the skin grafts that covered the Targaryen girl's body. But, the rose scars didn't fade as quickly as they wanted on Margaery. Nor did the older Stark sister wake up in the next week.

They fell into a routine after that. Killian began to camp out at Jaime's—and he later found out all of their, place, a big four story brownstones three blocks from the hospital. Jaime had joked, though it never was much of a joke more of a sad remark accompanied with a bark of laughter, they had turned it into a bachelor pad. Pizza boxes littered the floor, along with stacks of dirty laundry, and none too subtly hidden beer bottles.

They were cool the guys. Honestly he hadn't ever had mates, his only friend being Emma. He couldn't ever really count "Neal," even when they trusted the bastard, but these were just guys.

Interesting now doubt to that, they had a freaking  _sword_ room in the garage, where the other guy, Arya's friend, Gendry hammered away for what seemed like an eternity.

The Starks had these huge dogs, who looked almost like Huskies, though he swore one had glowing red eyes. And there was some sort of lizard upstairs but Killian refused to go near it, wading further into the rubbish.

Arya returned home after two weeks of this mess, and even as tomboyish as her brothers claimed her to be, she gave them an earful. All but threw them out of the house at "Needle point" Jon said, upset over what her sister would think.

"Not that she ever cared before what Sansa thought." Robb had said rather good naturedly, snatching a beer from the assortment on the table in the den. "Honestly, she would go out of her way to spite her. And Mother of course."

"So how  _do_ you know the blonde girl? Emma was it?" Jaime said in a teasing tone, after his third glass of whiskey, a drink he swore he detested, that wine was the only thing that could truly get him drunk. "She's a beauty."

His grin wasn't lecherous, as one would expect from a man in his thirties, though something about it didn't put a chill down Killian's spin. Instead his heart turned ever so slightly as the shift in his eyes.

"Don't try anything brother. I think your luck has run out with blondes."

The dwarf was an oddity. Not for his height, no, but in how he addressed everyone, like he was their uncle handing out scraps of advice. Even to his own brother.

The strange look in Jaime's eyes soon identified itself as mournful as he shuffled out of the room muttering something that started with a B, before Killian ever got to explain who Emma Swan was.

Two days after Arya came home, the man, the clever detective who Killian would really love to sock in the face, appeared in London. Full of fanfare and British blustering, Lestrade wanted to return to Scotland Yard. Got a call from a "Donovan" who begged for him to deal with the "prat."

Almost the next day, the other girls woke up. Not all at the same time of course, Margaery woke up first in a rage, mostly about the necklace that she couldn't seem to find. Solid gold, her grandmother's she whined to the nurses. Sansa and Dany followed soon after, the latter screaming something about dragons while the former was silent.

Emma woke that night, as Killian was the only one still left at the hospital, as Robb had brought Margaery her necklace and then facilitated the others' releases. The hand of hopelessness had never felt so close than when he sat in that chair, the same one he had slept in for fifteen nights, prayed for anything to wake her up.

Her hand covered in small white scars lay limp where he had last left it, as if waiting for his return. It was always lifeless, a dead icy weight in his hand, though tonight was different. Her hand was warm, like she had just sat in the sun.

"Hey Emma." He started, his accent slightly thickened by the despair of watching everyone else laugh, watching everyone else smile, watching everyone else be so alive, and her just lay there oblivious to the world.

And him.

"The other girls got out today. Full of apologies and promises to visit you. Apparently, they want to have coffee or something." He chuckled. Emma didn't do coffee, she hated working as an assistant at the parish enough, with all the little old ladies calling and whining to her every hour of the day. "Though I feel like…"

He ran his hand through his mess of black hair and rubbed the three day old stubble on his chin.

"I did this." It was those damn tears again. "If I had never met you, if I had left you in Phoenix… You wouldn't have gotten hurt. You could have a nice normal life and I would be out of the way…"

He didn't hear her sharp inhale of breath. Or see her brilliant green eyes open and stare at him her look turning from wonder to fury as she realized his words.

"Don't you dare Killian Jones." She snarled, her hand's grip on his turning defenseless to vice-like in a second as he looked up at her, mouth agape, blue eyes huge. "Normal's never been in the cards. For either of us. And if you think you could just leave me then you have another thing coming. I will always find you."

The last sentence was more of a threat than anything else though he took it to heart, moving her thin hand to his lips and pressing his lips to it.

"Really? Threatening a police officer?"

Then she laughed, that rich sound that seemed to wash over the minuscule glass cuts in his heart and erase them, as if they never were there in the first place.

"Emma Swan always gets her man."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to suggest any novels, movies, or television show you want me to base chapters on! Next time: The Mortal Instruments.


	7. Disguised as Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Cassandra Clare's "The Mortal Instruments" series....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, was everyone absolutely dying from Captain Swan feels in these past episodes? Unlike New York City Serenade, those did not impede my writing as much.  
> I want to thank my two lovely friends/betas Montana-rosalie (who is one of the most lovely, personable, relatable people I know I cannot thank her enough) and naiariddle (my voice of reason and lifeline in this extremely stressful season).  
> After last chapter, some people were confused by the new(er) characters. I promise they are plot devices, though if you do recognize some of the names, props to you!  
> I feel like last chapter did have a different focus. Maybe because we have such a huge gap in Emma’s canon for ten years I had to take some liberties. And no one is completely alone. So, I promise this chapter is more CS heavy.  
> Find me on tumblr at ladyswaninsists.  
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Nor do I own any of the amazing literature I borrow from.

_Seven_

_Disguised as Truth_

_“Love makes us liars.”_

“What are you doing about this fall?” Killian asked her, holding one of those glossy purple pamphlets that had been assaulting the parish’s—and by extension their mailbox since the spring, though Emma had never seen most of them, the hospital protecting her from the evitable conversation they finally were having.

She gripped the counter, glaring out the window at the morning rush of traffic clogging the avenue.

“I’m working.” Emma spit the words into her chipped coffee cup, her lashes dark and full over the black brew.

“Really Emma?” She finally turned around to face him, regarding the man.

Killian had always been a boy in her mind, even when they had fucked those few times.

He was a man now, that was for sure, from the haphazard stubble decorated his Grecian jaw, his hair rumpled from a battle with his pillow, and his eyes clouded with just enough sleep to turn them that deep limitless blue.

“You don’t just want to work at the church your whole life, Ems.” He waved the brochure again.

“It’s not like I have the money to pay!” She finally shrieked, spilling the coffee all over her raggedy baby pink pajama pants. “Fuck…” She muttered, slamming the cup down onto the counter and snatching a rag from the rack and started to uselessly rub the stain, keeping her eyes downcast.

“You got a scholarship. Partial. But, I can pay for the rest.” He muttered and she finally looked up, biting her lips in indecision between screaming with happiness or rage.

It wasn’t a pamphlet in his hand, yes it was still bright purple, yet Emma reverently took it from his hands, not seeing (as usual) his kind smile finally reach his eyes.

“When I’m out of college, I’m paying you hack every cent.” She told him in a snarl, though her hands told a different story as she delicately held the letter to her chest.

*Not Just Stories*

“Ummmm, hey can I sit here?” She hadn’t been in a classroom in years, not even remembering how she was supposed to even make a friend.  Killian had been the only one she _ever_ had(even when Neal hadn’t betrayed her, she had never seen him as such) though she never really had known how to “get along” with other girls.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried, at least at first. But, eventually the failures at conversation about shoes, boys, and make up became a rusty, useless skill, one she replaced with that of how to pick a lock.

But that was another life, one Emma was determined to end.

The girl in the other desk looked up and a flash of recognition danced through her round baby blues, her pencil clattering onto her notebook, catching the edge of her grey blouse.

“Of course…” She said in a soft voice, reaching over to move the daunting pile of books on the opposing desk. “You’re Emma right?”

Awkwardly the girl extended a hand and Emma took it, in the warmest handshake she could muster though the redhead ducked her head as though she was bowing.

“Sansa.” She tucked a stray piece of red hair that had escaped from the thick side braid back into the styling. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.” Emma lied, her fingers moving along one of the thin, practically invisible scars on her arm and then pushing her ever falling glasses up her nose. She had been in the hospital too long. One month after she had woken up for the doctors to ensure all the lacerations had healed and then another of just pure therapy. Absolute hell. Not that she would _ever_ verbalize it. “You?”

“I’m survived worse.” She answered with an odd hardness, similar to how she herself had dealt with the whole predicament. Emma frowned as she turned back to the front of the room, as the stuffy old professor started his lecture.

*Not Just Stories*

She had always liked information. Something about how you could turn a scrap of fact, a bit of data into so much more had always attracted the scrap hungry orphan.  Justice wasn’t her cup of tea of course, Killian and her both had been on that side far too long to see that it wasn’t the shining beacon of light that society saw it as.

The truth should set you free. That was the only thing written on her paper at the end of the two hour lecture though her mind was made up.

Who else could condemn everyone and still at the end of the day be free?

“Did you decide on a major yet, Emma?” Matthew asked her one night at the dinner table, the clanking and clatter of the knives and forks filling the small(ish) apartment. Killian’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth at that thought, suddenly realizing that now even _he_ had thought to ask.

And it was nearly October.

“I sort have put down journalism… But of course I have to double up so it’s technically criminology.” She said, completely unabashed, moving around the pieces of chicken on her plates, slumping in her seat.

It was odd, not seeing her almost all the time. Between the various cases Greg and Jaime kept assigning him, her course load, and church work, it was rare to actually speak to her. It was a blessing and a curse to walk back her bedroom to see her sleeping, the still too thin body angled across the bed, without any room for another soul.

“I’m glad you can put some of that writing to use instead of just typing up the church newsletter.” The priest grumbled, stabbing the meat on his plate with a bit too much force. “Think the Times would have you sweetheart?”

Emma blushed a deep crimson and shoved her glasses up her nose, a nervous habit Killian had found over the years, represented a myriad of emotions.

“It’s more an idea my friends and I have been working on.” Emma said, taking a sip of water, for picking up her plate and placing it in the seat before returning to the table to collect the others. “Political Crisis Management is _very_ in right now. Especially after the whole Clinton scandal.”

“What’s that?” Killian asked, for once actually rather curious, through a mouthful of food as Emma gently took his plate away from him with a motherly disapproving look she probably didn’t even know she was wearing.

“Covering up newsworthy people’s fuck ups.” She answered.

“Emma, language.” The priest chided her as he placidly sat in his seat, though she simply rolled her eyes when her back was turned during the dishes.

“Isn’t it my job to arrest them though?” Killian laughed and Emma turned on him, in a whirl of blonde and bubbles to strike him with the foam substance. His laugh was robbed from him soon to be replaced with her bright clear one, with the church bells above them that tolled the hour.

She had never much liked the whole “Cinderella” story, now more than ever since _the Incident,_ but the striking of midnight always held meaning to Emma.

Killian always seemed to come home then, and stop at the doorway, tie half undone, with that reverent look she only was allowed to see in church, and those stolen glances he gave her, hoping she wouldn’t see.

This time, unlike every single night before, she moved, rolling over to stare at the clock flick the date over from the 21st to the 22nd.

“Emma?” He hissed, taking one hesitant step into the room, fully loosening the tie. “Are you awake?” She nodded, propping herself up on one hand, green eyes trained on him, like a challenge.  He grinned at her, the flash of white teeth almost making the dark bags under his eyes disappear altogether. Patting down the pockets of the tan overcoat, he pulled out a box, plain and brown. It was too large for it to be a ring, but small enough to be a piece of jewelry.

Her heart sped up as he sat on the bed, and she shifted her body, her back pressed against the headboard and her legs angled to one side to accommodate Killian. Gently, he took one of her hands from the bed and placed the box in it, those faint white scars glowing silver in the moonlight, making her hand glow, a beautiful image rather than a hated one.

Green eyes shifted uneasily, egged on by the almost too eager blue ones as she opened up the box and shifted through a soft cream cloth bag, and found cool metal.

The chains tangled between her lithe fingers, the swan charm dangled from her fingers and catching the light. It was familiar though she had seen it in a _very_ different form and sworn it had been lost almost a year ago.

“Do you like it?” He whispered, his tongue wetting his lips ever so slightly. Tears shone in her eyes, and she nodded, handing off the necklace and pulled up her knotted blonde mane and turned around. His breath was hot on her neck, contrasting with the chill of the necklace, with fell to hang between the valley of her breasts, resting on her tank top.

For a second, he left his head there, holding it in the crook of her neck, waiting on her decision. Her breath caught in that second before she made up her mind.

“Thank you Killian.” She replied in a whisper, before moving her head slightly and captured his lips with hers.

It was a sweet kiss, with nothing else than an impassioned thank you, one neither of them thought to take further than a kiss, something they hadn’t done in over a year.

*Not Just Stories*

The next year, he slept in, spooning her back with his arms thrown across her torso in a rather caging manner. Groaning, she left him in bed, with a cup of coffee on the bedside table and a sticky note on his forehead written in fat black marker- _8\. Here. Tonight. PS: Clean up._

Having friends was a weird feeling. Them actually caring about her was a whole other realm entirely.

Her Law and Society class _should_ have been quiet, though Margaery, Sansa’s friend and partner in crime, burst in halfway through class, squealing about ‘the party’ later.

And then of course, immediately after her second class of the day, just the normal undergraduate journalism course, they managed to kidnap her.

The thing Emma hated the most about parties, was the preparation. Seriously, she would rather go completely barefaced and in her old pajamas to a club than spend hours tugging her hair into a pleasing style, trying on at least four different outfits, and paint her face in a rainbow.

Well not a rainbow. Almost white foundation, to match her skin. Rose tinted bronze eyes shadow under inky black eyeliner, with a similar black ink applied to her lashes. Pale pink blush on the apple of her cheeks, and a dash of red lipstick.

Emma had no idea where the hell her glasses had gone, sometime during eye make-up they had been stolen by one giggling redhead.

She felt completely unlike herself as she walked into the apartment, the black heels clicking on the ancient wood floors, catching a glance of a blonde _woman_ in a clinging red dress. The one thing she even recognized about herself was the silver swan pedant hanging from her neck, from her nineteenth.

Killian lounged on the couch, his raven hair still damp from a shower. He _did_ clean up nice, she had to admit, even shaving the stubble she had come to have a love-hate relationship with. He looked actually his age, rather than the mid-twenties look he tried so hard to achieve each day when he walked out the door.

The black blazer he wore over a cobalt and navy plaid button down was part of one of his business suits, probably, yet he pulled it off with that sinful pair of dark wash jeans.

“Ready to go?” She chirped, and he turned around.

“Emma?” He asked her, stunned to a point that made her awkwardly shift in the heels, so much that she tipped over.

Killian was adept at running, she gave him that, as he caught he practically in the nick of time, with a shy grin as he pressed her to his (when the hell did he get this buff) chest.

“Yup. Still me. Still a klutz.” She giggled, practically pushing him off of her and brushing off the dress, and checking that her carefully crafted hair had stayed in place. God knows what Margaery would do if she saw so much as a braid out of place.

The club they were supposed to meet at was in the Meatpacking District- a frankly odd location, but hey, industrial spaces + rooftops were “all the rage,” to put it in the gushy words of the fashion majors that made Emma want to vomit.

A packed dance floor dominated the middle of the roof top, with high neon colored tables and sixties era booths skirting the edge of it, parallel with the edge of the hazy stroke lights, an island in the dull gunmetal grey city.

It was hard not to notice the group in the corner, sitting in a brilliant pink booth, waving at the pair. Of course, they didn’t, as Emma was too busy clinging onto Killian’s hand, uneasily stepping onto the flashing colored floor panels.

“Emma!” A British accented voice almost shouted over the club music at the bar, finally catching the couple’s attention. Emma turned around and nearly fell over (again) as a fair, almost translucently skinned, blonde—Dany,  another one of Sansa’s little friends who had eventually become hers, beckoned her forward through the crowd with a excited smile. “Happy birthday!”

That phrase was a strange chorus throughout the night, what Robb muttered to her as he slid Killian a pint of rum, what Margaery whispered in her ear pressing _something_ in her hand and giving her a sidelong sly grin towards Killian, what Sansa told her to accompany the gift of whiskey.

It felt like she lost track of the night, in the flashing lights, really remembering bits and pieces.

The feel of Killian’s hands on her hips, familiar and comforting while at the same time exhilarating and a tad frightening.

How odd Dany’s hair looked in the pulsing lights, like a shock of fire down her back.

How she lost track of the whiskey, rum, alcohol she drank, god she was only twenty.

How she swore that they had done body shots.

And how Margaery’s gift was not what she was expecting…

But it had come in handy.

She had sworn she wouldn’t do _that_ again. No, Emma Swan was a honorary nun since she had been in prison.

He had gotten more muscular, she had to hand it to him, the light highlighting the defined torso like a marble Michelangelo. The performance…  it had been like coming home and moving in all at the same time, from the little things she could remember.

That’s when she started to lie. To Killian, when she never mentioned it, sneaking out of bed and acting as though she couldn’t remember it at all. To herself, when she repeated in her mind, like a prayer, it’s just sex.

He lied too. Going back to hide behind his sarcastic remarks, the hard look in his eyes, the intimate dance of pretending there was nothing there, just sleep returning.

Slowly, he gravitates back to his own bed, back to the throngs of nightmares accompanied by such.

They both know the other is lying in every word, every action, every step, though neither knows anything at all.

It’s not a secret. Emma tells her gaggle of girlfriends over lattes and textbooks, with a sort of flippancy that sends Sansa into a near fit. Killian confesses in the middle of an investigation, in a nonchalant manner that makes Jaime stop and frown at the boy for a good minute.

*Not Just Stories*

21 is a weird age. The passage through the last gate of rigid rules and restrictions, where your driver’s license changes from the premature verticality to a plain old horizontal badge of honor.

His friends take him out, Greg with that proud smile (Three years on the force and he’s already cleared up more cases than you sodding lot!), Jaime whose false smile dropped at the bottom of a bottle into a moroseness that his brother Tyrion can’t even drag him out of, Robb, the Law major who had been buying him illegal alcohol _since_ he was18, and his brother Jon, newly minted FBI agent who felt the need to whip his badge for everything.

Of course, if he had whipped it out that night, the other officers at the bar would have probably knocked him out. The NYPD was still a little cagey around the FBI since the terrorist attacks, an event that was more commonly being referred to as 9/11.

At that club last year, he had been completely convinced that he was a happy drunk. Or a seductive one, depending on if he could ever remember exactly how he enticed Emma into that particular state of undress (and if he could ever do it again. It was a lie, neither of them remembered the whispered “I love yous” or the long rolls of hips and moans that didn’t  quite add up to “just a fuck.)

Killian was a morose drunk, moody and broody in the dregs of his third pint.

“You’d think after 18 years, she’d let me out of the friend zone.” He just halfway slurred to none of the men in particular, though some looked up with mild interest, as Greg pushed him into a taxi and practically shouted an address at the driver (a side effect of the inspector plus alcohol, volume increase.)

 “I mean we’re both screwed up…” He continued his drunken rant, lazily walking in a different direction with each step, up the parish stairs. “but, if she could just make up her mind already.  She can’t just fuck me.”

“Who just can’t fuck you?” An irritated voice asked him, with those subtle tones of passive aggression that his sober mind would have picked up on.

The _legally_ drunk man turned on his heel, seeing the woman in the armchair, the only light in the room from a soft golden glow of a lamp. A book lay almost forgotten in her lap, like she had been asleep, with the bun on the top of her head askew and glasses on crooked he must have woken her.

“You.” He slurred, leaning against the metal counter and trying hard not to focus on her stance (arms crossed, eyebrow quirked, her mouth one thin line,) that was his warning. “I’m tired of lying. Just make a choice, already, gods…”

From the outburst, or the sheer wave he was riding and falling from, he started to tip forward, his vision becoming one sort of blur.

Killian didn’t remember much.

He was sure he hadn’t face-planted onto the tiles. And was positive Emma had dragged him to beg. And he was 90% sure she had cleaned up his vomit too.

After he had been an absolute dick to her…. Like Neal.

He lied more easily then, the easy friendship they had before not so easily replaced, but he lied to his heart, that it was best to just “stay friends.”

Her looks had changed too, a carefully guarded wall of protection over every emotion, a restraint that held her back from anything—and everything she might feel.

Growing up had been something they had never planned on doing, never even thought they would have to do those everyday mundane tasks, like taxes or even _work_ for that matter. There were still fragments of a childhood there. It was the same home after all.

Emma’s carefully stitched baby blanket that was halfway yellowing over the years of being dragged from home to home. Their beaten copy of Peter Pan, a story that one of them still read at least once a month. The way they still slept in the same bed, a habit that Father Matthew had admonished them about more than once, though he never heard anything.

*Not Just Stories*

He hadn’t kissed her in two years. Really if he were to be honest, it hadn’t been lucid, for maybe four or five now…

That drunken kiss on her 21st was nothing compared to the completely sober on at her graduation.

It was the first time he saw her smiling, really and truly smiling as she clutched the diploma, Graduating Class of 2005, practically running over to where he stood, awkwardly hold the bouquet of white roses that Margaery had insisted was only proper.

Emma pushed the cap back to clear her vision and purposefully walked towards him, opening her arms for a hug which he took as something else entirely.

Wrapping his arms around his waist, his mouth slammed into her as he dipped her down, her yelp of surprise being lost in the heat of the kiss.

It was an old memory, a reaction too hard to repress as she responded, one hand, the one hold that bit of paper, flying to her head to keep the cap in place and the other throwing itself around his neck.

The new memory didn’t last long, her green eyes flying open in surprise and she pulled away with that shy giggle that almost told him, here we go again. But, there was that damned wall back up again, as she took the flowers and gave him the “we’re just friends” smile.

The next week, after her incessant pestering at the NYU Career office—and her professors for a recommendation, she received a very neatly typed list of openings.

It wasn’t political crisis management, as she had hoped, but she needed practice in another field to even be considered for it anyways. Plus Margaery still had two years left in Law School and Sansa had just been picked up by some politician’s campaign.

During her four years at NYU, she had done her fair share of “good” pieces, published in the school paper and such, even winning an award at the coveted New York Times Young Journalists Convention. She didn’t care what she got, she just wanted to do something with her life.

On her first day, Emma didn’t sleep. Instead, after tossing and turning, she finally just gave up on the whole concept all together, closer to 4 AM, and wasted as much hot water as she could in the shower, before spending almost an hour perfect the business-like make up mask she had been tutored to put on over the years. Another thirty minutes on an outfit, finally settling on a scrunched up white blazer over a blue and white patterned dress, with the jacket covering the slightly racy back (there was none.)

And then she took to watching the news, and the sun come up over the iconic New York skyline. She roused Killian at promptly 6:30, to his usual string of profanity. She didn’t have the stomach for anything other than coffee as Killian shoveled cereal into his mouth, doing his tie with the other, his dark hair leaking droplets of water all over the blue collar.

They split up after ten minutes on the subway, getting on different trains with his sardonic “have a good day sweetie” and her glare and just a hint of a smile.

The building was intimidating. The people? Not so much.

The writers were brilliant, she gave them that, but honestly she hadn’t realized that every coffee break was 10 minutes, or thrown papers were a norm.

She didn’t really write for the first month, more just contributing reporting and running around the city. Though, Emma Swan was not a coffee girl.

Time Magazine let her write on her own, small articles, tiny features, after six months. After a year, she got her first cover deal.

Killian worked the ranks quickly, already feeling a bit older, and veteran(ish) after five years at One Police Plaza. He was younger than most of the 3rd grades on the force, feeling as though some of the lower firsts and seconds resented him, but Greg, now the Head Detective protected him from the brunt of it.

They moved out of the parish, into a surprisingly spacious 2 bedroom in Midtown. Though it was no closer to Killian’s headquarters (he still had a commute closer to 25 minutes) but Emma was able to walk.

It was odd, the sort of normality they fell into, with the practiced dance of “just friends” just as much of a part of their life as their jobs, or friends. It was a quiet life, with weeknights spent at the office and weekends at bars and parties (and church.)

Birthdays pass, years, where their friends start to forget, start to get caught up in the endless stream of tasks.

Normal never lasted though.

It was a late night, of finishing last minutes edits before that week’s issue went to press the following day. Occupy Wall Street was doing their damnedest to change their quotes and why the hell had Jobs had to die last week, she had been muttering all week. No one had time to write that monster of a piece.

Killian, surprisingly, was home before she was, with a couple of bags of takeout Chinese…

“Hey Em.” He said, with a bright, but oddly weary smile. She drops her purse on the bureau by the door and walks in, practically collapsing in one of the kitchen chairs, without taking off her heels. However, she did shrug off the black wool coat, to reveal a sinfully red body con dress, causing Killian to gulp.

Though, the reporter paid little heed to her appearance, instead rustled around in the bag for a second, pulling out a white box.

“Sanks Killian. I know we’ve been busy and all…” Emma said, through a mouth full of fried rice. But he didn’t let her finish, instead just muttering a “it’s fine” through his own mouth of food.

They both make quick work of the food, before Killian headed back into the stainless steel kitchen pulling out a plain brown box from behind the sugar jar.

“I didn’t have time to get you anything but…” He said, awkwardly opening up the box. “It’s Magnolia’s.”

Emma gave him a bright smile, and took the star candle from him, pressing it into the fluffy cream icing. He lit it with the lighter from his pocket, though he smoked way less now than before.

Her smiles turned sad under the golden light of the single candle. “Another banner year...” she whispered, to his frown before closing her eyes and blowing out the candle.

She never told him what she wished for, he stopped asking after three years, but her expression was unchanged, forlorn and wistful, that seemed to sadden and get a bit happier whenever his bright blue eyes met her deep green.

Almost the second the flame was extinguished by her breath, the doorbell rang a single tolling of a bell.

The two adults at the table from at each other, before Killian leisurely moves out of his seat, Emma two steps behind him, her heels clicking against the hardwood.

He doesn’t even look through the peephole, just unlocking the chain latch and opening the door.

It’s not anyone they knew, a coworker or a friend.

Rather, a small boy stood in the doorway, wearing a grey wool coat, charming black and red scarf and particularly sweet smile that made his brilliant blue eyes shine.

“Uh... can I help you?” Killian said, rather stunned, looking down more so at the kid’s dark hair. He didn’t respond at first peering behind the man to see the stunned blonde behind him.

A million thoughts flew through Emma’s mind as she looked at him, feeling like she knew this child…

“Are you Emma Swan?” he asked, his wide, innocent, _hopeful_ eyes bored into her soul, almost sending her back to her three year old self. Or ten year old god she had seen those eyes her whole life…

“Yeah…” She rasped, stepping forward to the other side of Killian and bracing herself against the doorframe. “Who are you?”

“My name's Henry.” He replied before making a quick, confused look at Killian. “I'm your son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Review, favorite, follow darlings! I hope you don’t hate me too much for taking it in this direction, so please, please, please give me feedback. And feel free to suggest any novels, movies, or television show you want me to base chapters on! Next time, I’m not basing the chapter on anything but it actually is. The Pilot of Once Upon a Time.


	8. Welcome to Storybrooke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally we ventured into the realm of the known plot...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for once again uploading late, but I hope the length of this chapter makes up for it. Though, OMG Once is heating up!!!! Honestly, I cannot believe that the CS fandom got the time travel theory right!   
> But, we’re finally into the Once plotline. This chapter is the pilot so get excited! Obviously I took some liberties with the timeline and such but this was a bear to write!  
> I want to thank my two lovely friends/betas Montana-rosalie (such an amazing person and the reason I find a reason to keep writing) and naiariddle (who is so beautifully insightful, constantly asking me questions to further develop my world). I don’t know how I could do it without them.  
> This chapter isn’t based on any other novel, tv show, or movie. I just used some of the best quotes from the Pilot.  
> Find me on tumblr at ladyswaninsists.  
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Nor do I own any of the amazing literature I borrow from.

_Eight_

Welcome to Story Brooke

“Believing in even the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing.”

“If you love them and they love you, they will always find you.”

The adults were practically frozen in shock when Henry slipped underneath Emma’s arm, the one that was bracing her weight on the door frame and invited himself into the apartment.

The spell was broken in a second, Emma turning and following him, with Killian lagging behind, moving in almost a different reality, not able to take his eyes off the child.

“Whoa, hey, kid! Kid! I don't have a son! Where are your parents?” She said, as “Henry” began to examine the entire space, his sharp blue eyes catching each detail.

“Ten years ago, did you give up a baby for adoption?” He asked, not even looking at the pair (couple, though both of them would vehemently deny that. “That was me.”

Her breath started to quicken, but she managed to gasp out, “Give me a minute,” before dashing off for the bathroom, leaving Killian standing there awkwardly.

Feeling as though he was drowning, he couldn’t do anything but look at the child, flitting around the apartment.

“Hey, do you have any juice?” Henry asked, opening up the fridge, his sapphire orbs lingering a bit too long on the man, like he was thinking everything Killian wasn’t saying “Never mind, found some.”

Emma left the bathroom, looking no less wired, though some of the color had returned to her porcelain cheeks.  She gave Killian an uneasy “I’m sorry” sort of smile that he returned with a glare, that could be read more as fear than anything else.

“You know, we should probably get going.” The kid piped up, between sip of _how the hell did he find that glass_ juice.  

“Going where?” Killian regains his composure first.

“I want you to come home with me.” He said, in a nonchalant manner that literally set Emma over the edge, with big begging innocent blue eyes.

“Okay, kid, I'm calling the cops.” She said, her mouth setting in that thin line she only got on the 11th hour of a meeting, crossing the room to where her phone lay, forgotten, on the counter.

“And I'll tell them you kidnapped me.” He countered without skipping a beat, like this was all in his grand plan

She set down the phone, giving Killian a look, one her “is this legit”s.

“They'll believe you because you’re his birth mother. The night shift isn’t that bright and I don’t fancy bailing you out.” He affirmed and Henry grinned, as though he was welcoming his newest ally, with more curiosity about his inside info shining in his blue eyes.

“Yep.” He said, popping the p.

“You're not gonna do that.” Emma challenged him, her green eyes going agate hard.

“Try me.” Henry shot back.

“You're pretty good, but here's the thing. There's not a lot I'm great at in life…” Emma said, though Killian moved to protest. “But I have one skill. It's called a "superpower." I can tell when anyone is lying, and you, kid, are.”

“Wait.” He begged, his poker face falling, and dammit. Blue puppy god eyes. “Please don't call the cops. Please come home with me.”

“Where's home, lad?” Killian asked, aiding Emma in dodging the question, his mouth speaking on its own accord. After ten years of police work, he knew how this was done, though there was only one thought in his mind.

Is this my son? Is he even mine? Was this “Henry” the blue eyed baby Emma cried on his shoulder about ten years past?

“Storybrooke, Maine.” He answered and Killian felt as though the look he gave Emma _his mother_ was proof.

“Storybrooke? Seriously?” She said, half to herself as she walked over to the counter, shoving the cell phone into her purse as the boy nodded.

“Alrighty, then.” Emma straightened up and already walking towards the door. “Let's get you back to Storybrooke.”

Killian—always the voice of reason stopped her “Emma! What do you expect to drive?” She turned around, seeing his teasing smirk and the dangling set of silver keys from one long finger.

She rolled her eyes and reached for the set, just for him to jerk it out of her reach, neglecting to remember the boy watching with them with half amusement and half surprise.

“Come on Killian just give me the da--- keys.” She stopped abruptly, stealing a glance at the kid and minding her language, in a manner that would make Father Matthew proud.

“Sorry darling, but it’s _my_ car.” He said, shoving his wallet back into his dark wash jeans and heading towards the door. “I’ll be back in thirty.”

“Where did he go?” Henry interjected about two seconds after the door shut behind ‘him.’

“To get the car.” Emma muttered, taking off her jacket again and heading back to the bedroom. “I’m going to get changed.”

Quickly, she threw on a nice(ish) grey tank with some metallic beading on the bust, her red leather jacket, and a pair of dark wash, cigarette jeans. Almost a second thought, she pulled on a pair of dark brown leather riding boots.

“Why’s it not in the garage?” He pestered, following her around the apartment as she dug around in Killian’s briefcase, her finger eventually meeting icy metal.

“Because this is New York. Not suburbia.” Emma muttered, pulling out Killian’s navy blue NYPD overnight back from the hall closet and stomped to his room, shoving a couple of pairs of jeans, a black blazer, some shoes, and shirts (button downs that she always had to help him with and t-shirts), shoving the laptop at the top of the pile, along with several of his toiletries. For some reason, she got a feeling they wouldn’t be home that night.

Her bag was full of work clothes, skirts, blouses, heels, and soft leather, jeans, boots. Plus, her laptop, her editor would kill her if she missed any deadline.

Emma Swan hadn’t taken a vacation in almost six years. Killian had taken one, only in his first year, when Emma was in the hospital. Regardless, she dragged the kid into the elevator, a million questions flowing from his lips.

After the bags were in the trunk of the black Cadillac SUV, rubbing elbows with the black gun case, and Henry had climbed into the backseat, his eyes scanning the assortment of equipment adorning the dash, and the backseat.

“Are you a cop?” He asked, as Killian maneuvered out of the 8 PM traffic, his blue eyes finding their twin in the mirror. “Sir?”

“Killian, please lad.” He said, jerking the wheel with his prosthetic hand, which Henry then focused on, as the cuff of the blue plaid shirt. “I’m a detective.”

He’s gives a quiet muttering of “cool,” then training his eyes on Emma, who kept her green eyes firmly trained on the radio, where the soft voices of NPR echoed, her pen moving across the page.

“What are you doing?” Henry finally asked, watching her write “page 13, cover???” in messy handwriting after the newscaster started a spiel about the Libyan Civil War.

“Working.” She answered, writing so hard the pen punctured the yellow paper of the legal pad. He realized not to bother her, instead taking out a leather bound book from the navy backpack he brought, turning the pages ever so quietly for the next hour. Occasionally he would interrupt them with a question, like how Killian could drive with one hand.

But, he got bored, looking at the quiet adults in the front seat, lost in thought, just outside of New Haven. The radio had long since been silences, though Emma’s pen was still poised against the page.

He chose to break the ice with a whine. “I'm hungry. Can we stop somewhere?”

“This is not a road trip;” Emma turned around, finally dropping the pen and putting it away in the purse at her feet.  “we're not stopping for snacks.”

“Why not?” Henry questioned, his lower lip poking out in a pout.

“Quit complaining, kid.” She said, her voice hard, as Killian gave her a harsh, surprised look. “Remember, we could've put your butt on a bus.”

“Emma!” Killian chastised her.

She still muttered “I still could.” And then the guilt hit her. “Sorry kid.”

“You know, I have a name?” he responded, his voice much quieter. “It's Henry.”

Emma didn’t respond, instead eyeing the leather bound book, with the gold scripted words “Once Upon a Time” written on the front.

“What's that?” She angled her body to the side, so she could swivel her head to face the boy.

He bit his lips, “I'm not sure you're ready.” His mother raised one eyebrow.

“Ready for some fairy tales?”

“They're not fairy tales. They're true.” He said incredibly factually, so much that Killian’s eyes were pulled away from the interstate and to the rearview mirror, to look at the book.  “Every story in this book actually happened.”

“Of course they did.” Emma sated the child, though the hint of sarcasm was impossible not to see.

Once they, at least the adults, had believed in that. Hoped that tall tales, and magical occurrences, were real, a savior for them both.

But ten years ago, at least for a firm placeholder, they had learned it was pointless to hope for the impossible.

“Use your superpower. See if I'm lying.” He insisted, the blue eyes glowing in the darkness of the car. God why did he have to be so hopeful? For a second, she felt as though she went back and time looking at the kid, almost waiting to shout “tap you’re it!” on his shoulder, or laugh with him.

But, he wasn’t Killian.

Henry had some of her features, her chin, the high forehead, but his whole being so supremely the man beside her, the sharp nose, elegantly carved cheekbones, sapphire stones for eyes, ink for hair, and that pale marble skin.

She stared at his for a moment, studying his features rather than looking for a lie, though Killian interjected instead, watching the boy for the actual purpose rather than in her wonder.

“Just because you believe something doesn't make it true, lad.” He said quietly, slightly jerking the wheel to exit the interstate onto a quiet country lane.

“That's exactly what makes it true. You should know more than anyone.” They weren’t sure who the “you” referred, though Emma asked the question.

“Why's that?”

“Because you're in this book.” He answered. “Both of you.” He was smiling widely, though they looked shocked at his story. Neither of them had met the kid and now they’re in a book?

“Oh, kid. You've got problems.” Emma laughed.

“Yup. And you're going to fix them.”

Killian’s breath caught in his throat and he pounded the radio dial, changing to his iPod, a Rolling Stone song coming on immediately.

Trust was blind, or it once was. This child trust him, _them_. And of course, they would let him down. It was better to break his heart early that let him get attacked and burnt, later.

*Not Just Stories*

The town was a sharp, jarring, contrast to New York, a metropolis that never had this sort of silence though it was just 5 hours away. Rain had been lashing the windshield since Massachusetts, though it had slowed to a steady drizzle.

“Okay, kid, how about an address?” Killian asked, slowing the car to the 20 mile per hour speed limit.

“Forty-four, not-telling-you street.”  Henry sassed. Emma rolled her eyes, as Killian pulled over and stopped the car beside the curb and getting out. Emma practically rolled out of the car as the kid hopped down, nearly slipping on silver runner on the side of the SUV.

She grabbed his arm almost instinctively, catching him from falling onto the pavement.

“Look, it's been a long night,” Emma told him, Killian coming around the car to lean against the black hood.  “and it's almost” She took one glance at a the highest building in the town, the clock tower “dominating” the skyline “eight-fifteen?”

That could not be right. Her internal clock, finely tuned from late night crises in the pressroom, told her it was either time for sleep or coffee. Meaning, past midnight.

“That clock hasn't moved my whole life. Time's frozen here.” He explained, Emma’s mouth opening in disbelief.

“Excuse me?” Killian interrupted.

“The Evil Queen did it with her curse. She sent everyone from the Enchanted Forest here.”

“Hang on. The Evil Queen sent a bunch of fairytale characters here.” Emma repeated, her incredulity growing by the second, though her companion started to feel odd. Like a tingling in the back of his brain, an itch that he couldn’t find but desperately wanted to be scratched.

“Yeah. And now they're trapped.” He said, failing to recognize the sarcasm that hadn’t left her voice since he first brought up the story book.

“Frozen in time, stuck in Storybrooke, Maine. That's what you're going with?” She gave him a pitying smile.

“It's true!” He exclaimed, as Emma bent down to his level, bouncing the balls of her feet.

“Then why doesn't everybody just leave?” Killian asked, again the twisting in his stomach becoming prominent.

“They can't.” he answered, his face falling. “If they try, bad things happen.”

A bespeckled man, dressed in a pair of blue pajamas with a tan suit coat, who had been standing with a Dalmatian, which was _not_ doing its business on a patch of vibrant green grass.

“Henry! What are you doing here? Is everything all right?” He yelled, jogging over to the trio.

“I'm fine, Archie.” Henry assured him, sitting down to run his hand over the black and white fur as Emma stood up, brushing off her jeans.

The man gave her a wary look, but his eyes went wide at Killian, taking a quick glance back at Henry.

“Who's this?” He asked the boy gently.

“Just trying to give him a ride home.” Emma answered before anyone else could put any “feelings” into their purpose.

“She's my mom, Archie.” Henry answered, his eyes catching Killian’s for a moment too long.

“Oh.. I see.” Archie awkwardly responded, looking between the blonde and the kid’s double several times.

“You know where he lives?” She asked, exhausted, her face feeling hot under the man’s stare.

“Oh. Yeah, sure, just uh, right up on Mifflin Street; the Mayor's house is the biggest one on the block.” He said waving in the general direction.

“You're the mayor's kid?” Killian asked, his hot blue glare finding the boy.

“Uh. Maybe?” He said, only slightly guilty for the first time, though he at least had the decency to glance at his feet and look sorry.

“Hey. Where were you today, Henry, because you missed our session.” The man asked and Henry perked up, his optimism oddly resilient.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I went on a field trip.”

“Henry, what'd I tell you about lying?” He said bending down to get with Henry’s eyes. “Giving in to one's dark side never accomplishes anything.”

The words were odd to Killian, like a knife being dragged across his hard, just barely skimming it. He looked at Emma though, and it seemed to fade in a second, though she didn’t even give him a glance.

“O-kay! Well, I really should be getting him home.” Emma said, with a yawn

“Yeah. Sure. Well, listen—have a good night, and uh, you be good, Henry.” The shrink said awkwardly, before walking away, tightly holding a leash, his dog running to catch up.

“So that's your shrink.” She said, opening up the back door for Henry.

“I'm not crazy.” The boy said, affixing the woman with a stare that resembled a miniature of Killian’s glare.

“Didn't say that. Just—he doesn't seem cursed to me. Maybe he's just trying to help you.” Killian suggested, talking a bit louder than he would normally as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“He's the one who needs help. Because he doesn't know.” Henry replied.

“That he's a fairytale character.” Emma replied sarcastically, as Killian twisted the car key and the SUV once again rumbled to life.

“None of them do. They don't remember who they are.” He answered, stroking the book softly, with a fond

“Convenient.” Emma muttered. “All right. I'll play. Who's he supposed to be?”

“Jiminy Cricket!” The boy exclaimed, as Killian rolled down the road.

“Right. The lying thing. Thought your nose grew a little bit.” She sarcastically quipped.

“I'm not Pinocchio!” The boy protested, looking as though he wanted to say more than that.

“'Course you're not. 'Cause that would be ridiculous.” Killian said a bit uncertainly, under his breath though everyone heard.

The Mayor’s Home was an imposing two story colonial, with a picture perfect grey stone pathway leading up to the black door.

“Please don't take me back there.” Henry begged the desperation in his voice, though never the less he walked beside the two adults, Killian hanging back a couple of steps behind.

“I have to.” Emma stated.

“I'm sure your parents are worried sick about you.” Killian added, messing with the cuff of his brown leather jacket, being sure to cover the beginning of the prosthetic.

It was bothering him tonight, more so than usual, the phantom pain that had been reduced to but a whisper, now, a longing ache.

“I don't have parents. I just have a mom, and she's--evil.” He explained dramatically, stopping just a couple of feet from the door.

“Evil. That's a bit extreme, isn't it?” Killian asked, stated bedside Emma, in no move a romantic gesture given the practical ocean between them.

“She is. She doesn't love me; she only pretends to.” Henry said, his lip trembling.

“Kid. I'm sure that's not true.” Emma said as gently as she could muster before the door was thrown open and a woman rushed out, closely followed by a “smartly” dressed man.

“Henry? Uh! Henry!” She said, throwing her arms around his and pulling him tight into her chest. “Are you okay? Where have you been? What happened?”

“I found my real mom!” The boy exclaimed, pushing away from his mom, he didn’t mention Killian, though the woman looked rather stunned at the pair, staring at Killian like she knew him and was terrified of him at the same time, and then at Emma with disbelief and a bit of fury.

“You're Henry's birth mother?” She stammered.

“Hi.” Emma squeaked.

“I'll.. just.. go check the lad, make sure he's okay.” The man said, staring at the pair for a second. Honestly, Killian started hearing the man, knowing a fellow “countryman” from his voice alone. Though he felt slightly offended at the usage of “lad.”

“How'd you like a glass of the best apple cider you ever tasted?” The raven haired woman invited, awkwardly holding out the door for the pair and eying the pair warily.

“Got anything stronger?” Killian asked, though Emma shot him a glare. God, it was practically 1 AM!

“Cider will be lovely.” The blonde woman acquiesced, shooting her friend a pointed look stepping into the slightly opulent (at least for a small town) foyer. The other woman, biting her lip, which Emma noticed had an odd scar running through it, disappeared into another room, returning a moment later with a crystal decanter of golden colored cider.

Emma took one sip, just to check if it wasn’t alcohol, before blurting out the question that had been pressing on her mind since she saw the child.

“How did he find me?”

“No idea. When I adopted him, he was only three weeks old. Records were sealed, I was told the birth mother didn't want to have any contact.” The woman explained, taking a sup from her own glass, and marking it with a scarlet lip print.

“You were told right.” Emma said, with little emotion eyes focused on her shoes.

“Are you the father?” Her next question pierced Killian’s heart, his mouth dropping open, a strangled cough propelling itself out of his throat. Emma doesn’t even look at him, just flicking her eyes up to the ceiling, remembering how Henry had _looked._

It was impossible for him to be Neal’s.

The woman analyzes the pair for a second, narrowing her eyes as neither of their meet anything but the floor before asking her next question.

“Do I need to be worried about you, Miss…?”            

“Swan.” Emma answered almost too quickly. “And absolutely not.”

The man from before came down the stairs, his boots making scuffing noises on the hardwood “Madam Mayor, you can relax. Other than being a tired little boy, Henry's fine.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.” The mayor said, and the man gave her a wave, walking through the door as she ushered Emma and Killian into a pristinely decorated sitting room. “I'm sorry he dragged you out of your life. I really don't know what's gotten into him.”

“Kid's having a rough time. Happens.” Killian said bluntly.

“You have to understand, ever since I became mayor, balancing things has been tricky. You have a job, I assume?” She gave both of them a raised eyebrow, like they were bums or something.

“I’m a journalist at TIME. And he’s a detective for the NYPD.” Emma said, her voice just hinting at pride and ferocity while the woman couldn’t help but look a bit impressed.

“Imagine having another one on top of it. That's being a single mom. So I push forward. Am I strict? I suppose. But I do it for his own good. I want Henry to excel in life. I don't think that makes me evil, do you?”

“I'm--sure he's just saying that because of the fairytale thing.” Emma said and the woman’s eyes went wide.

“What fairytale thing?” She asked, feigning innocence.

“Oh, you know, his book. How he thinks everyone's a cartoon character from it. Like his shrink is Jiminy Cricket.” Killian added.

“I'm sorry, I--really have no idea what you're talking about.” She said.

“You know what, it's none of my business. He's your kid. And I’m exhausted. Is there any where we could catch a couple of hours of sleep before heading back to New York?

“Of course. If you go down Main Street, the B&B’s there.” The Mayor said ushering the pair out the door. As they climbed into the car, Emma swore she caught a brief glimpse of the boy watching from an upstairs window.

*Not Just Stories*

For the early hours of the morning, the inn was anything but quiet.

An elderly lady and a girl with red streaks in her hair, and barely any clothes to speak of, were at war with each other, disregarding the ringing of the bell as the blonde journalist hesitantly stepping into the “small town picturesque” inn.

“You're out all night, and now you're going out again.” The grey haired woman yelled.

“I should've moved to Boston!” The girl shouted back, stomping towards, the back, her shorts riding up to make Killian take a second glance at her legs, earning him a smack on the head from Emma.

“I'm sorry that my heart attack interfered with your plans to sleep your way down the Eastern Seaboard!” The woman—probably the girl’s grandmother shook her head as she just noticed Emma, tentatively leaning against counter, while the man messed with the bell,

“'Scuse me? I'd--like a room?” She said in timid voice, masking a yawn.

“Really?” Emma gave her a nod and the woman bustles around grabbing a ledger and throwing the cover open. “Would you like a forest view or a square view? Normally there's an upgrade fee for the square, but as the rent is due, I'll wave it.”

“Square is fine.” She said, giving Killian a look as he nearly fell asleep on the desk.

“Now. What's the name?”

“Swan.” The woman starts scribbling down the embarrassing t-h-e before the girl could say anything. “Just Emma Swan.”

The elderly woman gives the pair a surprised look, her mouth open as she quickly fixed the ledger.

“Emma…” A honeyed voice said behind her, starting Emma out of her near sleep as a man dressed in a three piece suit. “What a lovely name.”

As Emma muttered an awkward  “Thanks,” a chill ran down Killian’s spine looking at the man as the old woman at the counter forked over a roll of bills from a drawer. Like he knew him and not in a pleasant way at all.

“It's all here.” The owner of the inn said just as Emma quietly asked Killian to get the bags.

He couldn’t tear his eyes from the man as he accepted the money without counting. “Yes, yes, of course it is, dear. Thank you.” He then walked to the door, finally noticing Killian and stopping in his tracks to _see_ the officer leaning against the door.

It was but a moment, though to the untrained eye the exchange was a lifetime of hatred. Then it was gone, only with the rage left in the odd man’s eyes and a clueless wary smile on Killian face.

“Enjoy your stay, Emma.” He managed to say through gritted teeth, before slamming the door behind him, Killian standing stunned, next to the doorway.

“Who's that?” Emma asked, whipping her head back around as the redheaded girl peered through the curtains at the retreating back of the man.

“Mr. Gold. He owns this place.” She answered.

“The inn?” Killian asked, his mind more clouded than it had been in a long time, though the cop just chalked it up to need of sleep.

“No. The town. So! How long will you be with us?” The woman bluntly stated

“Tonight. Just tonight.” Emma said, as Killian headed outside, to retrieve their duffels from the back of the SUV.

“Great.” She said, handing Emma an old-fashioned key.

She turned around holding up the key with a slight grin playing on her lips as Killian took both the bags in his hand and held up _something_ with an annoyed smirk on his lips.

“Sneaky bastard” Emma muttered, seeing the gleaming golden lettering of Henry’s book.

*Not Just Stories*

The banging on the door was annoying as hell. It halted for a moment, before the door burst open, the well-dressed sheriff from last night bursting through the door, holding his gun level.

“Henry?” He yelled, peering around the corner with the head of his gun, before shoving the pistol in his pants, while Killian rolled out of the other bed, still wearing his jeans from last night though he had rid himself of the shirt. “Apologies. We thought he was here. He’s run away.”

“Again.” Regina, the mayor, said, walking into the room, her black heels digging into the carpet. “Do you know where he is?” She turned her accusing black brow onto the pair, with Emma still in bed, and slightly appraising the shirtless Killian.

“Lady, I haven't seen him since I dropped him at your house.” Emma said, running a hand through her mess of blonde curls.

“Yeah, well, he wasn't in his room this morning.” Regina said, still accusingly.

“Did you try his friends?” Killian asked, his brow furrowing in worry.

“He doesn't really have any.” The woman admitted. “Kind of a loner.”

“Every kid has friends. Did you check his computer? If he was close to someone he'd be emailing them.” Killian made a point as he found a clean plaid button and threw it on, while Emma finally got out of bed, surprisingly still dressed to the sheriff and the mayor.

Seriously, what people have a kid together and then never have sex again?

“And you know this how?” Regina said with one raised eyebrow.

“You’re seriously asking a detective that?” He said, bouncing up and down to put on his left boot with his lonely hand. “I'll help you find him. And then I’m out of here.”

*Not Just Stories*

Though he had spent the first couple of years in the force living on a computer, Emma liked to call her raven haired companions an idiot when it came to the technology.

After fumbling with the keys, his lack of the right hand more acute than ever, she took over, moving both the men out of the way and after a few keystrokes, his inbox popped onto the screen.

“Smart kid.” She said, cracking her knuckles and began to open up a layer of computer coding. “Cleared his inbox. I'm smart too, a little hard disk recovery utility I like to use.”

“Emma, don’t use that shortcut. It would be must easier just use the…” Killian said, dropping off his sentence and putting down his finger from where he pressed it against the monitor and took a step back under her glare.

“I'm a bit more old-fashioned, in my techniques. Pounding the pavement, knocking on doors, that sort of thing.” The Sheriff said to no one in particular though Emma answered.

“This is a small town. I don’t get the luxury of pounding pavement when I’m got the whole goddamn world to search.” Emma’s eyes flew over the emails, which kept popping back up, biting one pale pink lip. “Ah, there's a receipt for a website, whosyourmomma.org—it's expensive.”

“He has a credit card?” Killian asked, peering at the _large_ amount.

“He's ten.” His mother flew a piece of dark hair out of her face and rolled her eyes.

“Well, he used one.” Emma said, making a couple more clicks with the mouse. “Let's pull up a transaction record. Mary Margaret Blanchard, who's Mary Margaret Blanchard?”

Regina’s mouth became a thin crimson line. “Henry's teacher.”

*Not Just Stories*

The Elementary School wasn’t anything like the schools Emma and Killian had attended as children. Shining with the gleam of small town innocence, the cardigan clad teacher with the bird in her hand fit the description to a T.

That is without the bird.

Killian had felt strange since showing up in the town, like there was something he had forgotten and couldn’t quite get to the surface. After last night, he should be grateful he hadn’t slept. The demons of his childhood hadn’t returned to him in a long time, but now, he felt as though they were aching to make an appearance.

The mayor walked into the room, her face an inky black storm as she glared at the other dark haired woman, her skin pale and hair chopped into a cute pixie cute.

“Miss Mills, what are you doing here?” She chirped, so much like the bird that flew off her finger and out the window.

“Where's my son?” Regina ordered, looking around the room, as though the slight woman was hiding him behind her mahogany desk.

“Henry..” The teacher frowned. “I assumed he was home with you.”

“You think I'd be here if he was? Did you give him your credit card so he can find her?” Regina made a stabbing gesture at the blonde, awkwardly leaning again the doorway, half in half out.

Secretly, Emma was glad she had packed something else to wear. Compared the grey power suit Henry’s _other_ mother wore, she had been grossly undressed in her red leather jacket and jeans.

Though the younger woman did not favor the suit.

Instead, she had threw on a fitted white button down, a dark navy and white knit skirt that Margaery had given her from some fancy preppy store over on 5th (Lauren?), and a black blazer, paired with last night’s riding boots.

“I'm sorry, who are you?” The woman asked, frowning at Emma.

Emma started to stutter, her green eyes going wide “I'm—I'm his—“

“The woman who gave him up for adoption.” Regina answered her mouth going into a hard line. Emma stared at her feet, feeling Killian shift behind her, the rough fabric of his leather jacket brushing against her hand.

“You don't know anything about this, do you?” Emma spoke to her caramel boots, flicking her eyes up to look at the woman.

“No, unfortunately not.” She said, pulling out an camel colored oversized bag Emma and Killian privately called a “mom purse” and began to look through it pulling out a matching wallet, flipping through the array of cards and cash. And then she sat back, blowing a strand of short hair out of her face in frustration. “Clever boy. I should never have given him that book.”

“What in the hell is this book I keep hearing about?” Regina snapped, with no shortage of acid.

“Just some old stories I gave him.” The teacher gave the hard woman a soft smile. “As you well know, Henry is a special boy: so smart, so creative, and as you might be aware, lonely. He needed it.”

“What he needs is dose of reality. This is a waste of time. Have a nice trip back to New York.” The mayor fumed and then turned, her hair fanning out behind her like a L’Oreal model and click-clacked out of the room and top speed, knocking over a stack of book in her huff.

Killian and Emma were almost immediate in their rush to help, right on their knees beside the teacher.

“Sorry to bother you.” Emma basically whispered, watching the other woman through a curtain of gold hair.

“No, it's--it's okay, I fear this is partially my fault.” She answered, taking the books from Killian and Emma and holding them to her chest, before laying them on the desk.

“How's a book supposed to help?” Killian remarked.

“What do you think stories are for? These stories? The classics? There's a reason we all know them. They're a way for us to deal with our world. A world that doesn't always make sense. See, Henry hasn't had the easiest life.” She added the last part rather sadly, as they left her classroom, walking down the tiled hall.

“Yeah, she's kind of a hard-ass.” Emma said in _the nicest way possible_ , though Killian muttered “bitch.”

“No, it's more than her. He's like any adopted child. He wrestles with that most basic question they all inevitably face: why would anyone give me away?” The teacher was distant at first, far away with an oddly philosophical expression on her face that transformed into a perfect “O” when she realized what she had said to the adults, both of who had stopped in their tracks and were looking anywhere but each other. Or her. “I am so sorry. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean in any way to judge you...”

“It's okay.” Emma mumbled, her eyes not moving from the “Reading is the Future” poster on the adjacent wall.

“I’m Mary Margaret, by the way. Mary Margaret Blanchard” The teacher beamed at Emma and Killian, as if trying to soften her earlier, unintentional blow, sticking her hand in their direction.

“Emma Swan.” The blonde said, taking her hand without any hesitation, though Killian had to consider it a moment.

Damn the prosthetic.

“Killian Jones. You’ll have to excuse my manners but…” He practically tossed the chopped arm with an expression of self-loathing as the woman looked once again, comically surprised, either at his disability or their lack of marriage (why the hell did everyone assume that!)

“Look, I gave the book to him because I wanted Henry to have the most important thing anyone can have; hope. Believing in even the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing.” She explained, recovering rather quickly.

“You know where he is, don't you.” Emma said, a sly smile appearing on her lips as its twin curled onto Killian’s.

“You might want to check his castle.” Mary Margaret gave her a similar grin before the pair darted off with a hurried, though grateful thank you.

They were odd, the teacher thought as she unlocked her car and started the drive home. Strange, young she’d give Henry’s parents that, though she had guessed the man— _Killian Jones_ was Henry’s father. Who else could be, the boy was his father in miniature. Yet, they were nice and oddly-no, in love.

Maybe they had been once. And if the thinly veiled looks in the man and woman’s eyes were any indication, they were hiding it now.

*Not Just Stories*

Henry played with a loose piece of wood on the “castle,” the chilly sea breeze embracing his onyx waves and sending them in a thousand different direction. He swung his legs off the sides, knowing, but not watching, the pair awkwardly approach, instead focusing his eyes on where the spot where the sea meet the sand.

“You left this in the car.” Emma awkwardly began, shuffling her feet, kicking sand over her right boot with her left as Killian took the book out from under his arm and handed it to the boy. “Still hasn't moved, huh?”

“I was hoping that when I brought you back, things would change here. That the final battle will begin.” He said solemnly, much took depressed from his tender age of ten, Emma thought.

Emma’s voice was weary, tired of saying the same thing for seemed like the millionth time. “I'm not fighting any battles, kid.” She never fought her own battles. Hell, she couldn’t even _fight_ in anything, that’s why she was a journalist! You just write down the facts on the sidelines, not in the melee!

“Yes, you are. You're here because it's your destiny. You're going to bring back the happy endings.” Henry affirmed, the hope once again a twinkle in his blue eyes.

Killian felt a bit left out. Emma’s destiny this, Emma’s supposed to do this. Emma, Emma, Emma.

Seeing his ~~son~~ product had been a shock. Terrifying and thrilling, he had been sordidly disappointed in the child’s almost ignoring of him.

“Can you cut it with the book crap?” Emma hissed, her eyes narrowing a hair.

“You don't have to be hostile. I know you both like me, I can tell.” Henry looked between them as Emma concentrated on one of the “parapets” and Killian ran his hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. “You're just—pushing me away because I make you feel guilty. It's okay; I know why you gave me away. You wanted to give me my best chance.”

Emma paused for a few seconds, before speaking. “How do you know that?”

“The same reason Snow White gave you away.” He replied, flipping the pages, searching for something. Emma, however, put her hand over his to halt the process and forced the kid to look her in the eyes.

“Listen to me, kid. I am not in any book. I'm a real person. And I'm no savior. You were right about one thing, though. I wanted you to have your best chance. But it's not with me. C'mon, let's go.

“Please don't take me back there!” Henry begged, digging his hands into the edge of the wood, in fear he would be dragged back. “Just stay with me for one week, that's all I ask! One week, and you'll see I'm not crazy.”

“We have to get you back to your mom.” Emma desperately tried, knowing if she said anything else other than those lines, then she would, eventually, love him.

And everything she love, Emma inevitably, destroyed.

Just look at Killian.

“You don't know what it's like with her. My life sucks!” He argued, the final push on Emma’s emotional wall. Her companion, best friend, ex-lover, whatever you could Killian Jones, knew it, was about to warn the child, but it was too late.

To tell the truth, he was close to snapping as well.

Her face was scarlet. “Oh, you wanna know what sucking is? Being left abandoned on the side of a freeway; my parents didn't even bother to drop me off at a hospital!” She didn’t mention what they had found out years later. That there had been two babies on the side of the road. “We ended up in a foster system and I had a family until I was three but then they had their own kid so they sent me back...”

Her mind flitted back, grasping onto the image of the lanky boy, with dirty jeans and a pitying look in his blue eyes, but a sly smile on his lips bowing to her. How he had just… known. Later, he had told her his story.  

“Sucking is having your family drown and then no one wants you for more than a month.” Killian looked at the grey sky, avoiding remembering that feeling, the hollow, harrowing ache of loneliness that he couldn’t—and probably would never cure.

“Sucking is having a friend and then watching them break over the years, and realizing one day, there’s not enough duct tape to fix all the cracks.” He whispered, looking at Emma, tears and thoughts reflecting like mirrors in both of their eyes.

Emma took a deep breath, collecting herself. “Look. Your mom is trying her best. I know it's hard. And I know sometimes you think she doesn't love you. But at least she wants you.” The last part was quiet, though it was an echo, behind the tough woman, was the Lost Girl. And when she wasn’t look instead focusing on the surf, the Lost Boy, the one who wanted her the whole time, though being thrown away wasn’t an unusual feeling for either of them.

She had done to his affections. And her affections had been trashed by another.

“Your parents didn't leave you on the side of the freeway; that's just where you came through!” Henry argued, his heart aching for the sorrow, the solitude, of the pair. They just didn’t know…

“What?” Emma spat, running her hand under her eyes, to wipe away the nonexistent tears she felt like were hanging on her cheeks.

“The wardrobe. When you went through the wardrobe you appeared on the side of the street. Your parents were trying to save you from the curse.” He explained, turning those pesky pages again.

Emma’s snark returned with a vengeance. “Sure they were, and what about Killian? Was he put into some magical treasure chest?”

“No.” Henry answered, his voice small as he regarded the man, who stood stiffly, his stomach roiling and his mind trying break out of a cage, pounding in on the skull. “The curse was expecting someone else. So it put him where he belonged. Protecting you.”

If what the kid said was true, it was another thing on his list of rejections. But, the cryptic-ness… Killian had to stop and wonder if those dreams…

“C'mon, Henry.” Killian said quietly, offering his lone hand to the boy and he grasp it with the wildly hopeful smile, while Emma caught the other, leading him down the beach.

*Not Just Stories*

Henry ran inside the moment they reached the Mayor’s house, without giving his mother, who still held open the front door, a hello or hug.

“Thank you.” Regina begrudgingly thanked her.

“No problem.” Killian responded for the both of them.

The first remark was innocent enough, though Emma should have known something was wrong by the way the woman pursed her red lips.

“He seems to have taken quite a shine to you both.”

“You know it seems kind of crazy.” Emma laughed. “Yesterday was my birthday. And—when I blew out the candle on this cupcake Killian bought me, I actually made a wish. That I wasn’t just going through the motions of life, pretending to be alright. To not pretend to be ok with just one other person. To not be totally alone. And then Henry showed up..”

“I hope there's no misunderstanding here.” His mother snapped, interrupting Emma’s monologue.

“I'm sorry?” Killian asked, unconsciously stepped a bit in front of, and quite a deal, closer to Emma.

“Don't mistake all of this as invitation back into his life.” The mayor ordered.

Emma’s face, and hopes, fell with a small “Oh..”

“Miss Swan, you made a decision ten years ago. And in the last decade, while you've been—well, who knows that you've been doing—I've changed every diaper, soothed every fever, endured every tantrum. You may have given birth to him, but he is my son.” She gave the ultimatum with no hint of kindness, hints of malice turning to fire in her dark eyes.

“I was working!—“ Emma hotly began to argue, her blood rushing. How dare she accuse her of being a druggie! The blonde journalist couldn’t remember if she had properly told Henry’s mother what she did, or if small-town mayors understood the implications of her or Killian’s jobs, but she would not be…

“No. You don't get to speak—you don't get to do anything. You gave up that right when you tossed him away. Do you know what a closed adoption is? It's what you asked for.” Killian wanted to speak up then, during the regally evil looking woman’s threat. _He_ had never asked for it. And she wasn’t fit to be a mother, in his opinion. There was some tugging in his brain, like when he had seen the town’s landlord, an instinct that whispered, “there’s more to them.” Helpful as a cop.

“You have no legal right to Henry, and you're gonna be held to that. So I suggest you get in your car, and you leave this town. Because if you don't, I will destroy you if it is the last thing I do. Goodbye, Miss Swan, Mr Jones.” She was already started to slam the door as Emma blurted out her next question.

“Do you love him?” Emma asked, her voice and mind, far away from Small Town, Maine. She was in a hospital room, in Phoenix, damning her past self, damning her present self, cursing her future self.

“Excuse me?” The woman looked appalled at even being asked the question after her display.

“Henry. Do you love him?” Killian repeated for Emma. It took a moment for the mayor to respond.

“Of course I love him.” She said, though there was a sort of flippancy that caused the skin between Emma’s eyes to crinkle into a frown as they walked away.

They arrived at their car in silence, though they kept walking towards the inn, an unspoken agreement between them.

“She’s lying, don’t you think?” Emma finally asked Killian.

He gave her a look, screaming yes.

“She doesn’t deserve him.” He hotly stated, opening the door to the B&B for her as he pulled out his wallet.

“Hi.” He started to pull out the grey Visa card, and then handed it to the very surprised Granny. “Can you add an extra week?”  

%MCEPASTEBIN%

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Review, favorite, follow darlings! More reviews equals faster chapters! And feel free to suggest any novels, movies, or television show you want me to base chapters on! Next time, I’m still going to go with episodes because I cannot seem to find anything else that can so eloquently fit.


	9. Impossibly Possible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on 1x02, "The Thing You Love Most..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh. Last night’s episode was such an amazing episode with the Outlaw Queen and DOMESTIC CS, I’m dying.  
> Sorry for again, such a delay, but because of the lengths of the chapters, I’ve had to change to updates about every two weeks rather than every single week. However, as we move into more “flash back” heavy episodes, I’ll be combining them for chapters.  
> This chapter is based on 1x02, “The Thing You Love Most.”  
> I want to thank my two lovely friends/betas Montana-rosalie and naiariddle. I don’t know how I could do it without them.   
> Find me on tumblr at ladyswaninsists.  
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or Once Upon A Time - Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz.

_Nine_

Impossibly Possible

In all their years, it felt like a foreign concept to be in the same room, listening to the sound of the others breathing. As usual, the guard fell asleep last, waiting for her breathing to steady.

It did, in time, though it wasn’t the peace he once known all too well as her haven from the world. Gasps interrupted her breathing, with small cries that wrenched at Killian’s heart, longing to wake her and hold her and promise her that everything was going to be alright.

And then he fell into a strange purgatory of his own, haunted by the strange demons that had always seemed to reside in the corners of his mind.

Though, this time, these beasts took recognizable forms, people that he had met in town that day, _why the hell did he feel like he knew them._ The lizard-like man ( _Crocodile_ his brain hissed), the landlord, ripping out a woman’s heart. Sometimes she’s nothing but a dark haired beauty that made his heart turn a bit (though he screams all the same).

But others—now, it’s always a blonde girl, _Emma_ , who falls into his arms in the end, his hand over the cavity in her chest and hook (yes a metal meat hook, how odd is that) in her hair.

The ~~memory~~ dream flickers again, changing to something even stranger, of an older lady with red lips holding a claw-like hand over him, of purple smoke. And there’s always that pain, a thousand times worse than when his hand was cut off before like he was being shrunk, burning down to his hand, skin scorching…

Emma wakes him up, screaming, not holding him down as much as cradling him as he sobs, deep gasps and rivers of confused tears (and pain) running down his cheeks.

“It’s ok…” She repeats over and over again in his ear, stroking the mop of wet hair and molding her body to fit his. Eventually he calms down, clutching at her hand, finding the strength to wrap his good arm around her.

“They’re back.” He whispers, pulling her down to lie beside him, the first time in years he could actually feel their relationship. Even the broken friendship of before, had never felt quite right in separate beds.

“I’m sorry. Killian.” Her voice was equally as soft, years somehow leaving her lips, her dark green eyes cracking, to show the pale emerald the walls masked. “Is this the first time since…”

“Since” could be translated to many forms. Since they were little? No. Since she abandoned his bed? Since they had grown up?

“They never stopped.” Killian admitted, his voice taking on the rough tone that had taken to represent his walls.

Hollow was the word to describe them both. Distantly was the adjective to call Emma, while longing was Killian’s, a static sort of state they had found themselves in for years, though for some reason those words fell away in the bed, _seeing_ each other for the first time…. In forever.

If it was the town or the child, neither would ever say, but something was decidedly different, almost like there was something else to the way Killian’s eyes sparked, or how Emma didn’t stiffen at his touch.

The nagging feeling at Killian’s conscious came around eventually, those traces of guilt (and pride) forcing him to _tell_ her.

“You don’t have to worry you know…” He assured Emma, who lifted her head and right eyebrow in confusion, eyes murky with the shores of sleep. For a second, he hesitates, of course, she could be mad at him, and for once her walls were down but…

Fuck it.

“About him being…” He didn’t say the “N” word. “I gave you the morning after thing, after you… you know.”

_Son of a bitch._ Was the first thing that went through Emma’s head as she looked at the man, who, for some weird reason looked like he was waiting to be kicked.

It never happened. Instead, her arms wrapped him even tighter clutching the man like a lifeline and bringing her lips to his cheeks with the implied words of “thank you.”

“Emma…” He breathed, staring her down through inky black lashes. But, the moment was over, cued by her yawn as she rolled over, pressing her back into his stomach, forcing him to spoon her.

“We’ll talk about it in the morning…. After sorting out the problem with our son.”

*NJS*

“Did you know the honey crisp tree is the most vigorous and hardy of all apple trees? It can survive temperatures as low as forty below and keep growing. It can weather any storm. I have one that I've tended to since I was a little girl. And to this day, I have yet to taste anything more delicious than the fruit it offers.” The mayor said, extending the apple toward Emma who squinted at the fake perky woman. Honestly who the hell was this put together at 7 am! Another skirt and jacket combo, this time in black, with the scarlet lipstick perfect smeared on her lips, and a basket of apples on her arm.

In comparison, the journalist was a mess, her blonde hair tangled, hanging over an oversized NYPD shirt. She had just rolled out of bed, though the said warm embraces was still otherwise occupied by a bleary eyed man staring her bare legs, the one who the shirt belonged to.

“Ummm… Thanks.” Emma hesitated before taking the basket.

“I'm sure you'll enjoy them on your drive home.” Her smile was poisonous and words dripping with venom as Killian came up behind Emma, his lean frame defines by a pair of blue plaid boxers and dark grey t-shirt.

“Actually,” Killian challenged, moving his stance to occupy half of the doorway, boxing Emma out of the woman’s reach. “I think we’re gonna stay for awhile.”

If it’s possible, Regina looks like she wants to drive her hand through his chest. “I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Henry has enough issues, he doesn't need you confusing him.”

“All due respect, Madame Mayor, the fact that you have now threatened me twice in the last twelve hours makes me wanna stay more.” Emma smirked.

Her innocence was the most overplayed thing Emma had ever seen in her lips, scoffing and running one gloved hand over her hair. “Since when were apples a threat?”

“I can read between the lines.” The woman challenged, crossing her arms over her chest and unconsciously leaning into Killian’s chest. “Sorry, I just wanna make sure Henry's okay.”

“He's fine, dear.” The woman sweetly said, the word “dear” stinging. However, instead of sounding like she was talking to a child, the Mayor sounded like one of those contrived Disney villains. “Any problems he has are being taken care of.”

“What does that mean?” Killian asked.

“It means I have him in therapy. It's all under control. Take my advice, only one of us knows what's best for Henry.” The bitch off would be entertaining had the woman not looked mad, Killian thought fleetingly, fire burning in the Mayor’s eyes as she spoke while the green ice of Emma’s hardened, like a mint leaf being pressed into a glacier.

“Yeah…” Emma slowly smiled, the devious smirk bringing out the dimples in her cheeks “I'm starting to think you're right about that.”

“It's time for you both to go.” Regina threatened, her eyes looking over Killian’s with a sort of suspicion and … fear? He wrote it off quickly grabbing Emma’s arm, a protective gesture that only earned him a glare.

“Or what?” Emma bit back and the woman stepped forward, eluding a sort of evilness that was to the point of being cheesy, had Killian not had the urge to punch her.

“Don't underestimate me, Miss Swan. You have no idea what I'm capable of.” She said before walking off, missing the other woman’s threat, whispered now only loud enough for Killian to hear, with a hint of a laugh in her wicked smile.

“Read my bio, bitch.”

*NJS*

The mayor knelt down to pick up an apple, red, like the color of her lips as the man walked up behind her practically waving a paper.

“The Mirror strikes again.” He said with a self-satisfied smile, eagerly waiting for the woman’s approval.

“You're late.” Was all she coldly responded.

“Sorry, I wanted to bring you the latest edition. I assure you, it's one of my better hatchet jobs.” He presented the thin paper to the woman who snatched it, glanced at the cover and frowned.

“That's not what I asked for. What'd you find out about them?”

“Well, the truth be told, there wasn't much. They spent a lot of time in foster homes, were in and out of a convent. They both got into a little trouble when she was a kid, but the details are locked up pretty tight. Since then, they've be clean. He’s a detective at the NYPD, Captain from how they talk about him. Specialty in solving ‘the weird ones’ according to his superiors. Murders, terrorism, the like.” And then he looked nervous. “She… well, she’s an excellent writer, graduated from Columbia six years ago. Mainly in political writing. Her…. insight” He chose the next word carefully, “into the Presidential race is one of the most followed stories. She travels a fair bit, only big cities though.”

“That appears to have changed.” The woman hardened, her mouth a thin red line.

“I-I didn't know that, um, she had Henry while she was in Phoenix? How'd he wind up here in Maine?” He spluttered, grasping at straws, a completely irrelevant topic that quickened the blood in Regina’s veins with rage.

“So if I'm understanding you correctly, you've found nothing of value. Which means you have no value, Sidney. Do you know what I do with things that hold no value to me?” She cocked her head to the side moving closer and hissing the next words in his ear “I throw them away.”

He then walked away, towards the diner, muttering some excuse of “keeping looking” while the mayor looked on, lethally.

*NJS*

Emma’s hands flew across the keyboard and Killian squinted at the Boston Globe, his phone next to him with a half typed email. Her feet beat against the tile as she worked only to be halted in her work and the waitress, Ruby as her nametag implied slid a mug in front of her.

“Here you go.” She said with a wolfish smile, as the writer looked up, startled before noticing the contents of the mug.

“Thank you...” Emma replied, her mouth watering at the scent of chocolate and cinnamon. “But I did not order that.”

“I know.” Ruby answered with a hint of a smirk at Killian as he set down the paper purposefully. “You have an admirer.”

Both of them turned around so fast, that Killian’s neck cracked and a stray curl got stuck in Emma’s mouth.

The Sheriff was awkwardly seated in a booth, trying to look as nonchalant as possible, failing of course. Killian’s the first out of his seat, the stool spinning as he all but stalks over to the man

“Ah, so you decided to stay.” He said, setting down his own paper, _The Storybrooke Mirror_ , and taking one look at the jealously seething man, while the blonde sipped her hot chocolate, taking her sweet time to make her way over to his booth.

“Observant. Important for a cop.” Killian glared, wanting to whip out his badge just to emphasize his point.

“Takes one to know one. Though I don’t remember ordering the hot chocolate for the detective.” His chocolate brown orbs found Emma, as she set the coco down on the table and slid it over in front of him.

“Look, the coco was a nice gesture, and I am impressed that you guessed that I like cinnamon in my chocolate, 'cause most people don't,” Killian muttered something about how _he_ liked cinnamon but she ignored him “But I am not here to flirt, so, thank you, but no thank you.”

“I didn't send it.” Graham defended himself, thoroughly taken aback at the blonde’s speech and Killian’s jealous blue stare.

In another booth, a kid had been sitting the whole time, quietly watching the exchange, feeling just the slightest bit ignored, since he had been there the whole time. “I did. I like cinnamon, too.” Henry piped, shouldering a cumbersome backpack as he got up from the lonesome booth.  

“Don't you have school?” Emma asked, the coco forgotten as the little boy walked over to them, Killian’s eyes following his every move with a new sort of reverence, while the mother tried her very best not to look pleased at the boy’s efforts.

“Duh, I'm ten. Walk me.” He asked, the man and woman following him closely out the door, her computer and his phone forgotten on the counter, their cursors still blinking in mid word.

“So, what's the deal with you and your mom?” Emma broke the ice, looking at Killian for a second, whose face still screamed murder from the earlier incident with the Sheriff.

“It's not about us, it's about her curse. We have to break it. Luckily, I have a plan.” Killian smirked, almost hearing his younger self saying the words, like the time they thought they could have a picnic on the Brooklyn Bridge. However, this kid had an odd sort of… truth, to his tall tale of curses. One that he couldn’t tell Emma he felt, but maybe the lad would understand… “Step one: identification. I call it, "Operation Cobra".”

“Cobra? That has nothing to do with fairytales.” Emma sourly remarked.

“Exactly, it's a codename. It'll throw the Queen off the trail.” He excitedly said, as though it were obvious.

“So, everyone here is fairytale character, they just don't know it.” Killian commented quietly, again that nagging feeling tugging at his mind.

“That's the cure. Time's been frozen... Until you got here.” His eyes were the picture of belief, making Emma want to do anything but look at him instead, searching her pocket for an apple from earlier and pulling it out, mouth poised to take a bite. Henry’s eyes grow wide. “Hey! Where'd you get that?”

“Your mom.” Killian answered with a raised eyebrow as the boy grew alarmed, batting the apple out of Emma’s hand.

“Don't eat that!” Emma frowns even harder, the crinkle between her eyebrows deepening.

“Okay... Um, uh, alright.” She said, Killian interrupting with a question of his own, the feeling in his chest intensifying.

“What about their pasts?”

“They don't know.” Henry looked at Killian as he answered, sapphire on cerulean, like the child _knew_ what he was feeling, staring straight into his soul. “It's a haze to them. Ask anyone anything and you'll see.”

“So... for decades, people have been walking around, in a haze, not aging, with screwed up memories, stuck in a cursed town that kept them oblivious.” Emma incredulously reasoned, for a brief instant thinking that she should write an opinion column on small town America and this analogy. Damn that could be good maybe even get her a damn raise…

“I knew _you'd_ get it!” Henry smiled, his whole face filling with light as he looked up at Killian, before turning to Emma. “That's why we need you, you're the only one who can stop her Curse.”

Emma looked more lost by the minute. “Because I'm the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming?”

“Yes! And right now, we have the advantage. My mom doesn't know that.” He slung his backpack around and unzipped the top pulling out a collection of pages. “I took out the end, the part with you in it.” He handed them to Emma before digging around in the bag again.

The page contained an illustration of a regal looking man placing a child, wrapping in a blanket with a stitched “Emma” on it, into a mahogany wardrobe.

“See? Your mom is Snow White!” Henry exclaimed excitedly, before pulling out a second set of page and thrusting them into Killian’s hands, with a word.

“Kid…” Emma started though he cut her off as Killian began to stare at the pages, his head hurting as he stared blankly at the first crumpled page.

Slowly, he unfolded it, seeing the first image, of a man caught up in a purple fog, his arms raised to protect his face, one hand and a prosthetic silver hook in the other. The next was similar to Emma’s with the wrapping, his of black leather, a stitched name on the sleeve in jagged fast tugs of a navy string. The resemblance stopped there, as the child, the black haired baby was by the looks of it screeching, in the arms of a positively wicked woman, who bore no small resemblance to the Mayor, tossing him into a greater cloud, over an ocean.

He knew it and didn’t recognize it at all, staring blankly at it while Henry started to speak again.

“I know the hero never believes at first, if they did, it wouldn't be a very good story. If you need proof, take them, read them.” He looked back at the school, taking a glance at a rambunctious playground. “But whatever you do, don't let her see these pages. They're dangerous. If she finds out who you are... then it would be bad. I think she already knows about Killian.”

“What about me?” Killian asked, a lump in his throat appearing with a sinking in his stomach. Henry took another glance at the schoolyard.

“I gotta go, but I'll find you later and we can get started. I knew you'd believe me!” He yelled, running off.

“I never said I did!” She yelled after him, her eyes looking defeated, lost, hopeful, and broken all at once as Killian stood beside her, still at a loss for words.

Henry grinned. “Why else would you be here?” Then he disappeared into the sea of backpacks, jackets, and metal playground equipment, as Emma crossed her arms not noticing the boy’s teacher creeping up on them, a small, proud smile playing on her lips.

“It's good to see his smile back.” Emma and Killian turned in a fluid motion, frowning.

“I didn't do anything.” Emma hesitated.

“You stayed.” She gave them a mischievous look. “So.. does the Mayor know you're still here?”

“Oh, she knows.” Killian laughs.

“What is her deal? She's not a great people person, how did she get elected?” Emma inquired, slipping her hand into her back pocket and tapping her phone. She gave a small smile as the red blinking light came up.

“She's been Mayor as long as I can remember. No one's ever been brave enough to run against her. She inspires quite a bit of.. well, fear.” The woman, Mary Margaret Emma recalled, bit her lip and cast a quick look at the playground, ensuring no one was listening. “I'm afraid I only made that worse by giving Henry that book and now he thinks she's the Evil Queen.”

“Who does he think you are?” Killian asked the teacher.

Mary Margaret scoffed. “It's silly..”

Emma’s laugh was a musical sound, her face transforming from the hard mask she always wore. “We’ve just got five minutes of silly. Lay it on me.”

“Snow White.” Emma looks slightly stunned, as the hard sound of the school bell rang, but the woman just smiled at her. God she couldn’t be… No, nope. Impossible. “Who does he think you are?”

Emma doesn’t answer. Killian doesn’t, frowning again at the pages in his hands, again at the silver weapon that replaced his current prosthetic.

“Captain Hook.” He answers, and the woman gives him a sly, close-lipped smile, taking a quick peek at his missing appendage. As she begins to walk off, Emma calls after her.

“Can I ask you a favor? Regina mentioned the kid's in therapy; do you know where I can find the doctor?”

*NJS*

“Are you sure this is a good idea Swan?” Killian asked, her for the… fourth? It had to be, time, as she boldly knocked on the glass office door, clearly reading “Dr. Archie Hopper. Psychiatrist.”

She gives him that infuriating smile, like _too late_ , as she pushes open the door and again taps the phone, the red icon appearing on the screen.

“Hey.” She squeaks, sounding as shy as possible as Killian rolls his eyes

The shrink looks up from his work and starts at the pair.

“Emma Swan.” He starts and stands, reaching over to pick up a thin newspaper. “And Killian Jones. I was just, uh, reading about you. Let me guess, you're here for help with a little post-traumatic stress?” He chuckles as Killian face drops, gesturing to his fake hand with the paper before setting it down. “That diagnosis was free, by the way.”

The shrink just notices the man’s face, the levels of pain on it evident, maybe he did need the counseling he had never actually been to anyone about his childhood, about the accident.

Emma covers for his with an awkward, fake laugh “No, I'm here about Henry.”

“I'm sorry, I-I I really shouldn't...” He looks to the side, shuffling his feet nervously, and playing with the horn-rimmed glasses.

“I know, I'm sorry. I only want to know.” She looked a bit lost at this, biting her lower lip.

“It’s fine, Miss Swan.” The pysch said, looking at the awkward man standing next to her, giving him a suspicious look, spying the bead of sweat on his forehead.

“I just... just tell me something. This fairytale obsession, what is causing it? I mean, he thinks everyone is a character in his book.” Killian inquired, the image of the terrifying looking man, with the hook for a hand and vengeance in his blue eyes.

“These stories-- they're his language. He has no idea how to express complex emotions so he's translating as best he can, this is how he communicates. He's using this book to help deal with his problems.”

Emma’s green eyes narrowed. “But he got the book a month ago. Has he been seeing you longer than that?”

“Um--Yes, he has.” The doctor answered, looking slightly confused.

“So who’s causing these ‘problems,’ Dr. Hopper? Bullies?” The man was screwed and he knew it. Expecting an accusation, at least Emma had been careful enough to avoid it.

“Uh-- his mother, Regina, is a... very complicated woman, and uh-- over the years, her attempts to try and bring Henry closer have only backfired.” He moves towards his file cabinet and opens it, removing one and tossing it on the table, with an almost challenging gesture. “Why don't you take a look at the file. Um... see what I mean.”

Before Emma could grab it, Killian interrupts, noticing the eager look in the shrink’s eyes and snatching her outstretched hand in his own and giving it a slight squeeze and smirking at the man’s obvious disappointment.

“Well, he talks about you a lot. You're.. very important to him.” He tells the truth, with the nerves of a lie or half-truth clouding his expression

Emma smiles softly, just noticing she still was holding Killian’s hand and whispering a “Thank you.”

They start to head out, the woman patting down her pants pockets, the man holding the door open for her with his prosthetic when the timid man speaks up.

“Miss Swan, Mr Jones. Just for the sake of the boy, be careful how you handle his... belief system. To destroy his imagination would be.. would be devastating.” The couple leaves in a hurry the moment they’re outside the door the woman whips out her phone.

A look of dread on his face, he punches in numbers on the phone waiting to hear the sharp tones of the Mayor.

“Did they take it?” She barked and he took a deep breath.

“No but, H-how did you know she was gonna come here?” He stuttered, hearing a whole ten seconds of radio silence on the other end of the line.

“I gave her the idea. And get some worth, Hopper.” Regina spat before slamming down the receiver.

*NJS*

Emma lay on her stomach on the bed, her fingers attacking the keys of her laptop, the phone lying next to her endless replaying a string of words, setting her teeth on edge.

Her fellow partner in crime talked quietly on his own cell phone, pulling out some favors with old friends he had told Emma, as he caught up with Jon, his email pinging every couple of seconds as new permissions and files came through to the detective.

The knocking on the door hadn’t ceased for a total of thirty seconds (yes, she counted) as she rolled off the bed and reluctantly pulled open the door, to reveal the surprisingly attractive Sheriff in the hallway.

“Hey there... if you're concerned about the "Do Not Disturb" signs, don't worry; I've left them alone.” She said, as Killian got off of the phone in a considerable hurry, coming to the door with his dark, protective look.

“Actually, I'm here about Dr. Archibald Hopper. He mentioned you got into a bit of a row with him earlier?” Graham questioned and Emma looked surprised.

“No! I was just interviewing him.” She said, Killian’s glare going from dark to murderous.

“I'm shocked, too, given your shy, delicate sensibilities. He says you pressured him for information and stole Henry’s files.” The man gave her a hard look and she gave him a smirk.

“We don’t have the files.” She told him. “The case is about something else entirely.”

“Alas, he's telling a different tale.” He already stepping inside, as much as Killian glanced around the room, looking for his gun. “May I check your room? Or must I get a search warrant?”

He barges into the room without ceremony, taking in the two open laptops, a notebook and a phone still playing a recording.

“Find what you’re looking for, _Sherrif?”_ Killian drawled, his smirk audiable as the other Irishman looked back at him, surprised.

“I'm afraid, I’ll still need you both to come down to the station. Do you have any proof against the attack on the doctor?” He asked and Emma smiled, holding up the phone.

“Oh, I can guarantee it.”

*NJS*

The tapes couldn’t be faked. Even under the confusion of the Sherriff when it came to technology, they hadn’t done anything “wrong” per se. Still, the call had been made and now the murk of the law didn’t cover street smart reporters or smirking detectives.

“So why would a shrink lie?” Killian asked, his shit eating grin dominating his feature, as he debated putting his boots up on the desk. Emma taps at the phone, cuffs jangling on her wrists, replaying one specific phrase from one of the conversations.

_“She inspires quite a bit of.. well, fear.”_ The tinny voice repeated and the Sheriff looked utterly defeated in that moment.

“From what I’ve concluded: The Mayor put him up to this..” Killian rummaged in his pockets for a second before producing his phone, tapping in a passcode. “She's gotta have something on him. He's terrified of her, like everyone else in this—–town.”

“Regina may be a touch intimidating, but I don't think she'd go as far as a frame-job.” Graham insisted.

“How far would she go?” Emma pushed. “I’ve covered politics for the past six year, Sheriff. I know how this works. What does she have her hands in?”

He shifted his stance, eyes dropping to the floor. “Well, she's the Mayor. She has her hands in everything.”

“I guess that includes the police force?” Killian’s eyes bored into the man, Emma practically seeing the analysis of the hard blues even as the prey tried to speak, he was trapped.

Thankfully he was saved, by a kid, followed a bit further away by a woman who clearly did not know her best way around a gym.

“HEY!” Henry yelled, skidding to a stop in front of the interrogators and the Sheriff.

Graham looks at the boy like he’s Christ reincarnate before realizing the Mayor was probably going to kill him for being here in the first place. “Henry! What are you doing here?”

His teacher, Mary Margaret, gave Graham a cold look. “His _mother_ told him what happened.”

“Of course she did!” Emma practically yelled, exasperated, while Killian looked at ~~his son~~ the boy, walking over to him and bending down, to rest on his knees.

From his time working the Park shifts, he had learned a thing or two about children. They always seemed to be less intimidated when you were looking directly into their eyes.

“Henry, I don't know what she said—“ He began, but stopped, something in the boy’s eyes wasn’t what he expected, the hurt, pain it wasn’t there…

“You're a genius!” Henry exclaimed, a grin splitting his face.

“What?” Emma wrinkled her nose in confusion.

“I know what you were up to.” Emma glances, confused at Killian, who merely shrugs. “You were gathering intel.” And then he basically dropped his voice to a whisper “For "Operation Cobra".”

“I'm sorry, I'm a bit lost..” Graham began, looking at Killian who was back to tapping away on his phone, this time, the insignia for the Federal Bureau of Investigation boldly displayed on the screen.

“Sheriff, All you need to know is that Miss Blanchard's gonna confirm her testimony and get Emma and Killian out.” Henry said with a charming crooked smile that struck a striking resemblance to Killian, making Emma feel as though she had been punched in the stomach. Twice.

“You are?” Emma stammered. “Why?”

“I--uh—trust you.” The teacher hesitated, but gave the journalist a warm, inviting smile.

“Well.” Emma gave the Sheriff a dirty smile. “If you could uncuff me...I have something to do.”

*NJS*

Where she had found a chainsaw, Killian could never say. The rage on the other hand, he was well acquainted with. She wordlessly handed him her jacket and blouse, like he was her bloody page or something, stripping down to her pair of heeled boots, jeans, and a sinfully sheer white tank top that made all the blood rush from his head to other appendages.

The look on the Mayor’s face was reward enough, as she watched Emma start to cut off a branch of her precious apple tree, through her office window, mouth a perfect circular “o.”

“What the hell are you doing!?” Regina yelled, stopping out onto the green without a care that her heels were getting stuck in the grass.

“Picking apples.” Emma said with sarcastic smile and dropping the humming saw at her feet.

“You're out of you mind!” The mayor screeched, as Emma crossed her arms over her bust.

Emma smiled, devout of any of the light it usually had, her face looking positively malevolent.

“No, you are if you think a shotty frame job's enough to scare me off. You're gonna have to do better than that. I’ve done better my first year out of college.” Emma gave the woman a cold look. “If you come after me one more time, I'm coming back for the rest of this tree. Because, sister, you have no idea what I am capable of.”

As she begins to walk away back towards Killian, he relishes in her expression, before having a clever idea of his own.

“Your move.” He yells across the yard to the stricken woman, while wrapping Emma’s jacket around her shoulder and giving her a tender smile.

*NJS*

If the most humiliating thing to ever happen to them wasn’t getting caught fucking by a priest, getting thrown out of a Bed and Breakfast had to top the list.

And finding the black SUV with a boot on it.

The woman’s phone trills an aria and she glares at it, snatching it out of her purse and slapping it open.

“Swan.” She snarls into the mic, while a cool, quite bitchy voice oozes out the other end, as Killian glanced at her, alternating between kicking the tire of his car, and treating anyone in the near vicinity to the more colorful sides of Irish swears.

“Ms. Swan, I'd be happy to continue demonstrating my power, but in my writing I'm guessing your resolve to stay is only growing?” The mayor sneered as Emma fumbled with the phone, ensuring that it was indeed recording. Thank the lord something today went right.

“You have no idea.” Emma growled.

“Well then.” The woman laughed lightly and Emma opened the passenger door, throwing her bag into it. “I think it's time we made peace. Why don't you drive over to my office.” Killian slammed the back door and Emma followed suit, making a rage filled statement. “Or walk—whatever suits you.”

Pounding the end call button, Emma stalked off, Killian following not too far behind, pocketing his phone in the back of his jeans.

Again, the reporter and the detective sat in the Mayor’s office, with Regina leaning against in a predatory stance, a false red smile on her lips.

“I'd like to start by apologizing.” She began and Emma’s eyes narrowed, as Killian vainly tried to conceal his surprise.

“What?” He exclaimed, and Emma sent him a “shut up” look.

Regina sighed, dramatically, like they were stupid. “I just have to accept the reality that you want to be here.”

“We do.” Emma muttered, like a vow, casting Killian a look that screamed “doe eyes,” forcing Regina to roll hers. Clearly this was not working out as planned.

“..And that you're here to take my son from me.” The fierce expression on her face could be read as pain by some. But, to the trained eye, it was calculated pity.

“Okay, let's be clear:” Emma narrowed her eyes as Killian finally spoke up. “Neither I nor Emma have no intention of taking him from anyone.”

“Well then, what hell are you doing here?” Emma had decided in two days, the woman was a witch. Minus the w, add a capital B to the beginning to get the other word that floated to her mind as the small town mayor played petty politics.

“I know I'm not a mother—I think that's pretty self-evident—but I did have him, and I can't help it—he got in my head and I want to make sure he's okay.” Emma stared at Killian as he rubbed a hand against his scruffy beard, eyes downcast in a desperate attempt to avoid meeting her eyes, reminding her that _he_ wasn’t even been there to see the boy as a babe, only finding out after the face and finally laying eyes on his miniature ten years later. Guilt piled up in his throat as Emma pressed on. “The more you try to push us out, the more we want to be here, especially after seeing how.. troubled.. he is.”

“You think he's troubled?” Regina baits, the sly smile never leaving her lips.

“Well, he's in therapy, and what we heard from the shrink _something’s_ going on, causing him to think everyone in this town is a fairytale character.” Killian interjected. “I’ve learned in my experience, _Miss_ Mills, that there is no fantastical or supernatural cause to anything.” It felt like a lie on his lips, though he couldn’t exactly be lying about cold hard fact. They had never failed them before. “It’s just a metaphor to the true villain in reality.”

Regina Mills, who just a moment earlier had been imposing, was visibly shaken at his words, giving him a hard glance like she was mistaken about something.

“And you don't?” She challenged again, a weak hit.

“Do what? Believe him? I work with cold hard facts.” Emma snapped. “I’m sorry if I’m a little skeptical. I wouldn’t go as far to call him crazy, but…”

At that precise moment, the door opened, only the last part of her sentence falling on the ears of a kid, who stood in the doorway for half a second before his face—and heart broke.

“You think I'm crazy?” He whispered, his blue eyes misting over with the hints of tears, even as Killian stood up, whispering his name, he runs off, the man in hot pursuit, while Emma rose to her feet, green murder in her glare as she looked at the smug Regina.

“You knew he would be here.” She boldly accused.

Regina gasped in mock surprise. “Did I know that my son comes to my office every Thursday at precisely five P.M. so I can take him for dinner before his therapy session? Of course I did. I'm his mother.” And then the evil smile returns. “Your move.”

Emma felt the emotions creep up on her, the constriction in her chest going ever tighter as she stared at the woman, feeling unbearable hatred for the first time in her life, and true vengeance.

“You have no soul. How in the hell did you get like this?” When the woman gave her no reply, she stomped out of the office, and out of the street.

*NJS*

Neither Killian nor Henry were anywhere in sight much to dismay, though she made her way down the street, eventually finding the apartment building that matched the address Henry’s teacher had pressed into her hand earlier.

She hesitates before knocking on the door, feeling as though she was supposed to be here, that for once she was doing the _absolutely right_ thing.

The school teacher answered the door a half a second later, needlework clutched in her right hand.

“Hey.” Emma whispers a greeting as Mary Margaret opens the door fully. “I just wanted to say thank you and, um, here.” The blonde awkwardly handed the woman a pack of money, a small token of her gratitude (and part of her contacts fund, damn this “real” America article was going to be good) and gave an exasperated sort of sigh, eliciting a kind motherly smile from the woman.

“You look like you need to talk.” She smiled at Emma, leading her into the charmingly quaint apartment and sitting down on a barstool as the woman busied herself in the kitchen, pulling out various containers, humming to herself. A regular Snow White.

The mug pulled Emma out of her mental searching, for Killian, for Henry, the smell of chocolate and something else tickling her nose as she hesitantly took the first sip.

“Cinnamon?” She asked, taking another, deeper sip and smiling—her first real once since last night.

Mary Margaret set a plate of cookies on the table, before taking a seat with her own mug. “Oh, I'm sorry. I should have asked. It's a little quirk of mine. Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” And then the teacher did the mom thing, once you tell someone you like something, they offer you another thing, this time a cookie. “No, thanks. When you came down to the station, you said.. that you trusted me.” The woman nodded, solemnly taking a bite of a cookie. “Why?”

“It's strange—ever since you and your…. friend arrived here, I've had the oddest feeling, like we've met before. I mean, I know it's crazy.” Her laugh was a bit light hers, the bell sound, while Emma’s is the final tolling at midnight, Mary Margaret’s is the breeze of chimes at 4 PM.

“I'm starting to reevaluate my definition of crazy.” Emma joked, her look suddenly morose as she regretted the word.

Mary Margaret reached for her hand, sending it scurrying away from her, earning a disappointed look and then a small smile. “For what it's worth, I think you're innocent.”

Emma snorted.

“Of breaking and entering, or just in general?”

“Whichever makes you feel better.” The teacher giggled.

Emma sighed, forlorn, her mind set, to hell with what Killian thought.

“Doesn't really matter what anyone thinks I did or didn't do. I'm leaving. Thank you for everything, but I think it's for the best. If we stay, Henry's only gonna keep getting hurt.” She stood up, heading towards the door, fighting the tears and the cracks in her heart that she knew were only the beginning, god Killian was going to _kill_ her.

And then that perky, strangely familiar voice stopped her.

“What happens if you and Killian go?” Emma purses her lips, though the rest of her body is frozen. “I think the very fact that you want to leave is why you both have to stay. You care about him. Who will protect Henry if you won't?”

“His father.” Emma whispered, as she ran off to find her boys. She didn’t quite catch the woman’s shout out the door, but somehow the offer of a place to stay was saved in her brain.

*NJS*

Killian’s voice was quiet as he sat next to the boy, finding him eventually on his castle, an abandoned wooden playground on the beach, sniffling.

“You know, whenever I was upset, I’d find the ocean too.” He started _as awkwardly as possible_ , plopping down next to him, and nearly slipping the prosthetic providing a poor grip on the rough wood. “Then again New York Harbor isn’t much of an ocean. It’s always been more water for me.”

Henry’s still silent as Killian reaches into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out the slightly crumpled set of pages and stared at them, comparing the silver hook into the photo to the sleek gloved prosthetic that took his place.

“Is that why you think I’m… Captain Hook?”

“Why should I?” Henry spoke up, snatching the pages from him, a bitter tone that was much too old for him (but just right for Killian at that age). “I’m crazy aren’t I?”

“No you’re not…” Killian muttered, unintentionally. “Listen, Henry, about Emma.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He snapped, peering curiously at Killian after his earlier comment, the faint sparkles of hope lighting up his eyes.

“Just hear me out.” Killian begged, only slightly, looking down at the boy’s bent head, a mess of snarls and tangles in the raven mop. “Your mother doesn't know how to deal with this... She's a journalist. Only wants to believe what she can see never follows her insists, if she did of course.

“But you believe me don't you?” He studied Killian’s face before his own broke out into a smile, though the detective swore his betrayed nothing. “I knew YOU would. Do you remember?”  


Killian sighed thinking of his sleep’s demons for as long as he could remember. And the story... He just felt like he knew. Impossible but his entrails were telling him otherwise.

“You really do want your father to be Captain Hook, lad?” He wearily questioned.  
  
“It's just a name.” Henry reasoned, a small smile on his lips (so much like Emma’s.) “Like my last name, right? They don't really mean much in the end.. Plus, you're not into waxed perms and mustaches, are way cooler than Disneys version... And a detective in this world! Though I still don't get how you lost your hand... Again.”

Henry paused, looked up at the man with identical blue eyes.  
  
“Sorry.” He whispered, the moon’s light catching each of his features in shocking clarity as he looked up at the older, harder man. “I didn't think of having a dad I guess. Always the Savior, my mother.” He laughed a bitter sort of laugh, with none of the bells or whistles of Emma’s, all Killian’s bark.  
  
“But I want Killian Jones to be my father. Not Captain Hook. I've never had one before so I don't what you're exactly supposed to do but I mean you're the only person who believes me AND remembers....” Henry was a treasure trove of words, Emma’s son in that aspect, Killian had come to find, making wanted to cry, to run.

Trying to cut the boy off, he was suddenly stopped by the warm body clutching his, his own arms tentatively coming around him.  
  
“We’ll find a way, lad.” He whispered into his hair, inhaling the smells of the sea, of little boy, and flowers…

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Emma said with a dry smile, a lone figure to the black of the night, her hair silverly gold.

Henry pulled out of the hug and set a weak scowl on his face towards Emma.

“Henry, I'm sorry.” She said, getting down onto her knees to maintain eye contact with him. He doesn’t move, frozen, his arms crossed. So she continues, looking at Killian once for assurance. “Henry, there is one simple reason I stayed here—you. I wanted to get to know you.”

“You think I'm crazy!” He cried, the argument much weaker than before, when he had shouted it at Killian. “And he doesn’t!”

Emma sent Killian a shocked expression, then a grateful smile.

“No, I think the Curse is crazy. And it is.” She sighs wearily. “But that doesn't mean that it isn't true. It is a lot to ask anyone to believe in, but there are a lot of crazy things in this world. So, what do I know? Maybe it is true.”

Belief was one of the strongest things she had learned. They had learned. Killian found people would kill because they believed one thing. Emma figured that American society believed in the wrong people.

Henry wrinkled his brow, confused. “But you told my mom—“

“--What she needed to hear.” Emma finished the sentence.

“But, what we do know... is that if the Curse is real, the only way to break it is by tricking the Evil Queen... into thinking that we are nonbelievers. 'Cause, that way, she's not on to us. Is that what Operation Cobra was all about? Throwing her off the trail?” Killian reasoned.

“Brilliant, detective!” Henry exclaimed excitedly, Emma and Killian stealing a look between each other.

“I read the pages, I’m sure Killian has as well.” Emma said, taking out her own set. “And Henry, you're right—they are dangerous.”

Emma then gives Killian a look, like do something, a desperate cry for help.

Reluctantly he pulls out his lighter.

“There is only one way to make sure that she never sees them.” Dropping the pages onto the beach’s shores, he took Emma’s stack from her hands lighting the first one, before dropping it into the entire stack, watching baby blankets, heroes, witches, queens, princes, and one silver hook go up in flames.

“Now we have the advantage.” Emma affirmed.

Henry’s hugs were always surprising, rather like a baby bull trying to rush you.

Emma gasp has his arm squeezed around her midsection, while the other reached out for Killian, awkwardly drawing him into the small circle.

“I knew you were here to help me!” He whispers into her blouse, and Emma smiles, really and truly running a hand through the boy’s hair as he breaks the embrace.

“That's right, kid. we are.” The pair of identical blue eyes staring back at her were a welcome, terrifying sight. But, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Killian placed his only hand on Henry’s shoulder, a gesture she had only seen a couple of times from Father Matthew or Lestrade to Killian. _Fatherly_ was the word she had been desperately searching for to describe his expression as looked at his son, kneeling down to be even with him and her.

“And nothing, not even a curse, is gonna stop that.” Killian genuinely smiled, for the first time in ten years.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Review, favorite, follow darlings! More reviews equals faster chapters!


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